


Hoku'ae'a - Rising Star

by Narkito



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: First Meetings, M/M, Pre-Slash, Space AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-04-16
Packaged: 2019-04-22 19:04:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14315178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Narkito/pseuds/Narkito
Summary: Danny's assignment is simple: pick up the Golden Child of Oahu from the outskirts of the Federation, and deliver her back home. Nothing goes according to plan. // Written for the 2018 H50 Big Bang. //Space AU.Please note this is not written in sci-fi fashion, you will not find long winded descriptions and explanations about the world nor the tech. You will, however, find a story about survival in a very dire situation.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I want to thank my artist [Ivy Cross](http://ivycross.tumblr.com/), who picked up my story at the last possible minute and did a wonderful job with the art.
> 
> Also, a huge thank you to [Ilmare Ilse](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilmare_Ilse/), for cheering me on, her beta services, and her unwavering friendship. 
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy it.

Danny is not freaking out. Not one little bit. Okay no, that’s a lie. He’s free-falling to his most certain death, strapped to a malfunctioning medpod from wrists, chest and hips, and he’s on the verge of passing out from the fear. He is most certainly freaking out. Definitely. And that’s about the size of what’s certain for him right now.

He’s not sure what happened. He boarded the ship late afternoon with his mark in tow, accompanied her to a seat and then everything went black, only to wake up here, in the ship’s sick bay, half naked and strapped to a gurney from every limb.

The ship shifts and something gives somewhere, he jerks to the side, straining painfully against his restraints and the strap at his feet snaps. His feet elevate slightly and his brain immediately supplies him with the term _‘inertia’,_ reminding him of his preschool physics teacher that used to show them neat experiments about space and the orbit of worlds. He thinks his feet are travelling slightly behind the rest of his body, in a terrifying lesson of how inertia works on a mass, within a vessel, travelling at high velocity from sky to ground. Or at least he _thinks_ it’s about inertia, he’s not sure, maybe because he’s more preoccupied about the fact that he’s going to die.

As the acceleration of his fall slows down, a different teacher comes to mind, and this time he’s sure this is about terminal velocity and shooting stars. The need to laugh comes from deep within, though it dies quickly on his lips, followed by tears that blur his vision.

He wants to yell, but he can’t, the pressure is almost unbearable, like a rock over his chest. He guesses the mask over his mouth and nose is instrumental in keeping him well within oxygenation levels, because he’s fairly certain he should have passed out a long time ago.

There’s a sudden jolt that tugs at the structure of the ship, and every conceivable object inside the chamber is strewn off the shelves and sent into their merry way, bouncing off the walls, the medpod’s dome and the floor. The thick padding of the straps digs into his skin, making it hard to breathe. There’s another jolt, followed by a deafening thud from below deck that settles painfully into his chest, and the room goes pitch black.

The darkness loosens the scream that had been lodged in his throat the entire way down in one deafening roar that leaves him feeling raw. And with that, Danny’s last thought before he fades into unconsciousness is about the petite woman he’s supposed to be looking after. Oahu’s golden child: _Kono Kalakaua_.

He relaxes into the darkness and sends out a prayer for his beautiful daughter and son.

Next time he wakes up, there’s a siren going on and on, interspersed with a message screaming for everybody to get to their general quarters. The medpod’s dome is cracked in several places and a red light covers the room.

His body starts making known its grievances. But what wins the contest of most annoying pain, is the splitting headache that seems to engulf his head from forehead to nape. Even blinking hurts. He tries moving, just jiggling his leg and testing the strap on his hip, but it proves to be too much, wrenching a painful cry out of him. His breathing comes in fast gulps that fog the mask on his face, and then the medpod whirs to life. There’s a series of beeps and buzzes from below the gurney, followed by a profound relief from deep within as warm saline is pumped to his veins from an IV line hooked to the inside of his arm.

He only has time to mumble, “ _oh, no bueno,”_ before he melts into the gurney and his body starts singing in a chorus of hallelujahs to the tune of very strong analgesics. Getting out of this one will be a lot harder if he’s high as a kite.

Slow as a snail, he shimmies his IV arm from one side to the other until he gets the line tangled, cutting off his supply of drugs, but it takes a lot longer for the worse of the fogginess to lift from his mind. In the meantime, the intercom of the room has sputtered to life a few times, but it’s not something he can understand from inside the medpod. He has tried several times to override the medpod’s security system with voice commands, but every time he does, he gets shut down by a long beep followed by two short ones. He has no idea what that means.

With his head clearer, he decides his best shot is to keep pushing and prodding the restraints, he’ll worry about prying the medpod open when he gets to that point. As he works on slipping out of the straps he needs to keep the IV tangled, to avoid further trips into the happy place. Turns out that during an emergency, there is such a thing as too happy.

He finally manages to slip the strap from his right wrist, and from then on, it’s a piece of cake to undo the others. As soon as he’s done, the medpod whirs again, the straps roll back into the underside of the gurney with a satisfying swish of a sound, and the pod all but spits him out, by retracting the dome and tilting the gurney to the side.

He falls out in a half crouch, grunting by both the effort and the surprise. A hydraulic auxiliary arm appears from the underside of the pod and extends until it sticks a smiley-face sticker directly into his skin at about navel level, and then, the intercom plays a garbled version of the Federation victory tune.

“ _Sonuvabitch!_ You thought I was a _child?!_ ” Even AIs are mocking him for being short these days; this is what the galaxy has come to. He tries to unglue the sticker from his skin, but it’s already into an intimate relationship with his hairy abs and he thinks it’s better to leave it there until it falls on its own.

“ _Defective software piece of crap,”_ he mutters under his breath only for the machine to answer with what can only be interpreted as a tutting sound of disapproval.

_Oh, to yearn for simpler times._

A quick review of the clothes drawer on the lower side of the medpod, where patient’s clothes are meant to be stored, reveals _some_ clothes. Sadly, they’re not his own, so he’ll have to play survivor with polka-dotted socks, a t-shirt that says, ‘ _A pineapple a day keeps the worried away_ ’, and nothing else.

 _Fantastic_.

“Fucking hippies,” he grumbles, lower than before, but still managing to trip up the kiddie censorship program, earning him another tutting, followed by a series of beeps that signal a warning of demerits if he keeps up the naughty behaviour. He knows this from all the times his mother left him and his siblings under the all-seeing eye of _Robotina_ back home. At some point in his teenage years, he’d had dreams where he heard that same series of beeps, and they often turned into nightmarish talks with his parents and empty promises to improve his behaviour that would get shot down by the one-and-only Robotina, a devilish piece of nanny-software hell-bent into getting him grounded.

 _“Geez_ , you’re literally a mothership now,” he says as he smooths out the front of his newly acquired t-shirt. Grammar aside, it’s something and it’s clean.

Then he stares past the hem of his clothing into his bare legs. _Trousers:_ he needs them, like yesterday. And shoes; there’s quite a few things he can accomplish in a possible hostile situation in just boxers and socks. In fact, he’ll get very far if pressed, but he would rather not have to try, still half-naked.

“ _Mother_ ,” he calls to the kiddie program, sarcasm barely in check, “where are my shoes and _trousers?_ ”

There’s a sputtering from the intercom that turns out to be unintelligible, followed by three beeps and more whirring behind a wall. A panel dislodges from the opposite wall to the door and Danny figures there’s got to be scrubs there, at least, or he’ll have to chance the corridors in his underwear, not willing to risk crashing from very probable internal injuries before he finds a safe(ish) way out of this.

It’s not scrubs, but it’s not kid-sized clothes either, so he’ll take it, even if it makes him look like a hippie GI Joe with the clashing styles of the t-shirt and tactical gear.

After he’s dressed and his boots fastened, he returns to search the hidden cupboard. Odd, to say the least. There’s no real reason for Federation Army Uniforms to be stashed inside a wall on a cargo transport, much less along with outer-walks suits. This _reeks_ of funny business, but there’s only so far his mind is willing to go whilst swimming in painkillers and restoratives.

A simple inspection doesn’t reveal much, the cache consists of four army uniforms and four pressurised suits. Two hangers are empty, missing either a uniform and a suit, or two of each, hard to tell from the context. None of the uniforms have name tags, but that’s expected, if they had such an obvious identifier, then it would mean the universe suddenly loves Danny, and he has about 12 years of proof to the contrary.

There’s nothing else to do here. Time to go exploring.


	2. Chapter 2

He stands in front of the door and waits for the Intelligent Travelling System; ITA, to take over. And then waits some more, but the system doesn’t respond.

Of course it doesn’t: stupid, stupid, _stupid._ This is part of why he was worried about the drugs flooding his system; it’s hard to think in this state.

He taps the intercom to signal the system to open the door, and the system acknowledges him by flashing a blue light on the panel. So far so good.

The door starts moving, opens about four inches, and then stops, the mechanism recalibrates itself and tries again. Same thing happens; it starts moving, it pushes against some invisible obstacle and after a second, stops. It tries a third time and then hums to a halt. It’s stuck.

_‘So far so good’?_ He spoke too soon. Typical.

He struggles for a while, trying to push it open, twisting this and that way to get some leverage, but his body starts protesting, loudly, the worst of it around his midsection. He thinks about jamming his leg in there, but he doubts there will be an adequate prosthetic engineer to fix him if he gets his metal parts out of alignment. He forces himself to think, and an idea pops in his head.

He looks back into the mess on the floor and picks one of the metal bars of the shelves that came apart, wrenching it between the door and the frame, prying the door open with a fraction of the original force he would have needed. It still wreaks havoc on his core muscles, making the entire warm fuzzy pleasantness of painkillers recede into the background, but at least it gets the job done.

There’s a slight bump as the door slides on its rails and once it opens fully he realises why. There’s a person jamming the door, his arm stuck in the groove at the bottom, crushed and unrecognisable. The colours of the uniform and badge tell him he was a steward of the ship, and even before he reaches down Danny knows he won’t have a pulse, but it’s his duty to make sure.

He takes a deep shuddering breath. The body is already colder than it should be, hitting him with the notion that he’s been out of it a lot longer than he initially thought.

He side steps carefully and walks down the corridor, in the direction of an intermittent green light that’s showing the evacuation route to follow from this area. He rounds the corner and stops sharply, digging his heels on the floor. There’s an arch of dried blood on the hall, an arterial gushing pattern that goes from left to right, stretches far above his head in the ceiling, comes down the opposite wall and finishes with a small puddle on the floor. He feels himself swallow hard against the rising panic in his chest, and stares at the several boot prints on the floor; red angry stains that crisscross the blood pool, leaving a trail of hurried feet leading to the end of the hall and to the right, into the next corridor.

He swallows thickly and mumbles to himself, “that’s one way to kill what was left of the buzz.” He swallows again. He needs to get to an inquiry station, preferably the control room. Something with an actual console he can tap commands into.

“ITA, where’s the closest terminal console?” he asks to the ceiling, expecting nothing to really happen, and nothing does. The system is clearly shot to hell.

He decides to follow the signs towards the evacuation exit, there should be a terminal console in there anyway, assuming this ship is up to code. From there he should be able to find out what happened in between boarding and waking up in sickbay. He has a gut feeling that whatever put him there is long gone, but he would rather know than just guess.

The next turn of the hallway reveals more signs of destruction and mayhem: some items scattered on the floor, scuffing marks and bloody palm prints on the walls.

It’s hard not to stop and stare.

He shudders and forces himself to keep going, dragging the back of his hand against his forehead. He’s starting to get sweaty. If from exhaustion, fear or shock, he can’t really say.

The end of the road does not lead to an evacuation pod. The lights go out at a random door and not even the emergency lights are working beyond that point. Thankfully, though, the green path does end close to a terminal console.

He stands in front of the screen and presses just under it, to release the keyboard, which lowers slowly until it is positioned about half an inch over where his elbows are. The screen blinks to life. Good to know this ship is up to code.

“Okay, game time,” he murmurs to himself, typing into the terminal some basic commands to figure out the state of the system. The commands appear briefly on the screen, but then the screen goes blank, showing an intermittent cursor in the middle of it. After a beat or two it starts typing a message.

SYSTEM LOCKDOWN. IDENTIFICATION NEEDED. PLEASE HOLD STILL FOR RETINAL SCAN.

Something inside the wall makes a horrible whirring sound and a yellow light on the panel blinks twice in response, after that, the awful, something-has-been-irreparably-broken noise stops.

“Geez,” he exclaims, “even I managed to figure everything’s broken in here, just stop trying, you dumb piece of space shit.” Even as he says it, the thought that he should have kept his opinion to himself, unfurls in his mind. No sooner does he think this, the intercom at the door right behind him beeps in a very special way, announcing demerits for bad behaviour and tutting its pre-programmed disappointment.

“Da—” He cuts himself, frowning. “ _Darn it_ ,” he says, slowly and deliberately, omitting his preferred swear-word. Another thought crosses his mind and he frowns harder; he doesn’t even know where _Robotina-The-Resurgence_ is taking demerits from. His mind eye visualises his bank account and he shudders.

Danny forces himself to refocus to the task at hand. A red line has appeared on the screen followed by an error message: RETINAL SCAN INCOMPLETE. PLEASE SUBMIT NAME AND IDENTIFICATION TAG.

He sighs harshly and hitches in the middle of it, inhaling his sigh back in. It makes his chest and ribs hurt. He rubs absentmindedly over his heart and suppresses the need to grumble some more; he can’t even dis the process in a nonverbal manner now, even his body betrays him.

He starts typing before he agitates himself into a full-blown rant. Who knows how many demerits he’s got left before he’s sent back to his room to have a good think about what he’s done.

As for the identification tag? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t have his phone, there’s no travel code wrapped around his wrist and for the love of life and universe, he can’t even remember giving his boarding pass a look before he boarded the ship. His badge number and precinct designation will have to do: HPD-7576-OAHU-DISTRICT

COMPARING INPUT TO SHIP’S MANIFEST. ANALYSING VOICE PATTERNS. PLEASE HOLD.

There is a fraction of a second pause and then strings upon strings of code begin to run through the sides of the screen, impossible to discern one blur from the other, they keep coming until they’ve ran their course stopping at the familiar intermittent cursor.

QUERY COMPLETE. WILLIAMS, DANIEL. IN TRANSPORT TO OAHU DISTRICT. OFFICER IN COMMAND. PLEASE INPUT YOUR QUERY.

_Oh, shit. No-no-no. Not good. Not good at all._

“ITA, please clarify, _who_ is officer in command?” he asks aloud, figuring that if ITA managed to analyse his voice patterns, then it might be up to the task of recognising voice commands.

SPECIAL AGENT DANIEL WILLIAMS. REGISTER TAG #HPD-7576-OAHU-DISTRICT. HIGHEST RANKING OFFICER ON BOARD.

_Oh, fuck no. He’s screwed._ He buries his face in his hands, sinking with both elbows into the keyboard until he feels something crack underneath. And then the stupid intercom beeps and tuts behind him.

“I didn’t mean to break it!” he yells to the Robotina program, hoping an apology will save him from further chastisement.

“ _You didn’t mean to break what?_ ” Somebody says behind him, and Danny jumps so high and tenses so fast, he can only describe his scare as cartoonish in nature.


	3. Chapter 3

“ _Sonuvabitch!_ Who are you?!” Danny shrieks, as he turns around to meet the person that almost made him jump out of his skin.

The newcomer has a buzzcut that screams regulation and a fake-relaxed stance that confirms his suspicion of Federation Military. The army uniforms he found earlier come to mind, so he stows the connection to analyse later, once he has more information.

“Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett,” the newcomer says, very calm and collected; trying to keep Danny from startling again, but still in a very much authoritative manner, “who are you?”

“Special Agent Daniel—” he starts, at the same time ITA beeps and announces through the PA system that he is _SA_ _Daniel Williams, officer in command_. ITA almost sounds proud to Danny’s ears.

“ _You’re_ the captain?” Steve asks, the embodiment of incredulity, at the same time Danny lifts a finger to the ceiling (where he guesses one of the speakers is) and yells, “I am most emphatically _not_ the captain!”

The intercom behind Steve beeps, marking the discount of even more demerits. _For what?_ Danny has no idea; going against authority maybe? Which is ten levels of screwed up as he has been assigned the highest-ranking officer on board, but _who has time for logic after a shipwreck, right?!_  

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up and he turns slowly towards the intercom. There’s a pleased smile blooming in his face as he does it, and once he turns back to Danny, his smile has become blinding and mocking in equal measure. This Steve guy is enjoying this situation way more than Danny would like.

“Did that just happen?” Steve asks, pointing his thumb in the direction of the intercom, his eyes twinkling with laughter. It’s as annoying as it is alluring.

Danny kicks himself internally, this is not a good time to check out the newcomer, he could very well be the reason they’re a shipwreck right now. He sighs, deflated. _How is this his life?_

“Yeah,” Danny answers in a monotone, “that just happened. I assume ITA is short-circuiting somewhere.”

Lt. Commander Tall, Dark and Handsome, nods as if he completely understands on a personal level what Danny’s saying; like it makes sense and he can connect with the experience somehow.

And Danny? He just nods along with McGarrett, because _why not?_ Danny’s anxious, his chest hurts (from said anxiety) and he’s getting dizzy by all the commotion of the past seven minutes he’s been awake. Agreeing with Steve at least gives him a sense of belonging, that, being the sole survivor—well, _one_ of the few survivors—does not. The fact that Steve’s easy on the eyes helps too.

Danny shakes himself mentally to refocus on the situation unfolding before him. He opens his mouth to ask Steve for details, about the crash landing, their whereabouts, Steve’s reasons to be on a commercial shuttle to Oahu; _anything_ that can help him make sense of what happened. But some movement on his periphery alerts him, and he quickly turns to come face to face with his person of interest, who also happens to be the last person he remembers talking to before he woke up in sickbay: Kono Kalakaua.

Kono, on her part, smiles until her cheeks dimple, kind-hearted recognition shining in her eyes. Her posture is open and affable. Just another friendly person on a journey back home. Yet how far they’ve come from the celebration of her championship.

Danny frowns in return, trying to find his way to fury, or anger at the very least; she looks way too composed after this catastrophe. It borders on offensive, to be honest.

“Kono,” Steve says, cutting through their visual contact, “this is Special Agent Daniel Williams,” he introduces him to her, adding after a second, “ _The Captain_.”

Kono’s face morphs from relaxation, to surprise, to sombre understanding.

A cold shudder runs down Danny’s spine, it dawns on him this is no longer a short journey back home, but a fight for survival after a shipwreck.

Kono shakes herself and greets him in that tone of voice that Danny has learnt to associate with the Hawaiian System, and the Hawaiian System alone.

“Brah,” she says, throwing a shaka sign in his direction.

Danny’s eyes open wide at that, and he side-eyes Steve, to make sure he’s not freaking out over it, but Steve seems to take it in stride. He has noticed Hawaii tends to do things in their own way, and often with little regard to Federation rules. Plus, the only reason he knows that’s a forbidden sign is because somebody at work let him in on the symbolism behind it. He reminds himself the average Federation citizen has no recognition of this sign, and a visitor in Hawaii will only be told about local customs, such as greeting and hanging lose, not the other stuff behind it. He looks at Steve one more time, just in case, but he sees nothing there.

_Okay, get it together, Danny_ , he mentally shakes himself.

“You two know each other?” Danny asks, feeling a pang of pain in his chest, but dismissing it in favour of getting to the bottom of the familiarity between these two.

“No,” says Steve, crossing his arms over his chest, his muscles bulging under his shirt. Danny can perfectly imagine him leading a bunch of men into battle like that.

Kono, on her part, cocks her head to the side and says, “Sure,” breaking into a knowing smile

Danny frowns some more, another pang of discomfort going from his chest to his belly, but again he ignores it, instead pointing at Kono and commanding her to explain: “You, explain.”

“He’s Ensign Steve McGarrett.” She points to Steve with her thumb. “ _Everyone knows Ensign Steve McGarrett,_ ” Kono finishes, putting a special inflection on the last bit, though not clarifying anything by it.

Steve makes a terrible poker face that would lose him all his money in the red-district, and Danny looks him up and down trying to figure out what’s up with this guy.

“Join the Space Program?” Kono continues, as if quoting someone, “Sail the skies? Help the Federation be the voice of humanity?”

Ooooooooh! Danny’s sudden recognition contrasts exquisitely with Steve’s red cheeks of embarrassment.

“Oh-oh- _oh_ ,” Danny exclaims, pointing to Steve’s chest, “you’re the poster kid! For the recruitment centre! Your face was all over my college, babe,” he adds, enthused, a goofy smile dangling from his lips. Though the face he had seen in that poster was a baby in comparison. Steve must have been shy of 20 years old at the time that picture was taken. The name of the Ensign was not known in his parts of the Universe, though.

Steve’s cheeks go a few shades darker as he lowers his head and closes his eyes ruefully.

Danny can feel the shame radiating from Steve’s body, all the way across the hall, and he’s not one to waste a ribbing opportunity. He’s about to make a comment about it, when the pang in his chest comes back full force, so much so, that he doubles over in pain, incapable of even making a sound.

He can sense that both Kono and Steve rush to his aid, but he can’t collect himself long enough to tell them what’s going on. The pain in his chest becomes unbearable, and his knees buckle. He tries to break the fall with his shoulder and ends up rolling into a foetal position.

“WILLIAMS!” Steve yelps, trying to catch him in vain before he hits the floor.

“Ste—Steve,” he mumbles in short breaths. Danny’s hyperventilating, not sure what to do or say right now.

Steve’s eyes are wide and round, and so close he can practically see the freckles of green in his irises.

“Williams! _Goddammit_ —DANNY!”

Danny wants to tell this lug of a person to stop wasting time by saying his name over and over, but he can’t, because beyond the intent, words will not form in his mouth, and the air seems to be getting thinner and thinner as the seconds go by.

Kono rolls him into his back and tilts his head, clearing his airway path and checking for a pulse, and even though he’s grateful for her keeping her cool under pressure, he very much doubts going through the ABCs of first aid is going to be enough today.

Danny’s chest constricts tighter still, and he _knows_ he’s going to pass out. As the edge of his vision begins to fray he uses the last of his coherent thought to focus on Steve’s eyes and face; a face he had grown accustomed to see plastered all over the halls of his conservative college. He had toyed with the idea of joining up at the time, but then he had met Rachel and his priorities had quickly shifted to something that would allow him to contribute to the safety of their family without going off-world for months at a time.

Danny locks eyes with Steve and pleads with him, for what, he doesn’t know. Even though he doesn’t know him, it feels like he does. Intimately.

As Danny contemplates Steve, he sees Steve’s face go from worried to stunned and terrified, his lips shaping around a surprised “o” as he turns to Kono and then falls back on his arse and hands.

Danny tries to stay awake a little bit longer, to find out where the new threat is coming from, desperate for survival but unable to do much more. His eyes fall shut and his consciousness begins to slip away from him. A second later his body is alight with warmth that’s quickly mounting to white-hot-heat, and he can feel the insides of his body protesting, the heat so strong, he’s afraid he’s going to melt as he becomes engulfed by it.

It’s like a current of electricity to his soul, a last pump of adrenaline surging through his veins. Danny struggles against the pain and opens his eyes again.

Steve has scurried off all the way back to the other side of the hall, he’s hyperventilating too, with his back and elbows plastered against the wall, and when Danny follows Steve’s line of sight he can understand why.

There’s a humanoid figure standing at arm’s length from Danny, it looks like it’s made of fire and light, thick arms of plasma rippling through the surface and licking into the ceiling. For a fraction of a second, Danny wonders if looking at the humanoid figure is as inadvisable as looking directly into a sun. Against his better judgement, he tries to roll to see the humanoid figure better, but it notices him first, extends an arm towards him and presses a scalding-hot finger to his forehead.

As the darkness takes over, an image forms fleetingly in his mind. His kids are playing under the dinner table of their old house, and his heart stutters to a halt.

He passes out for real this time. 


	4. Chapter 4

There’s a buzz of movement around him that’s messing with his shuteye time in a massively annoying way. He lets his mind drift over nothing in particular for a while, floating inside his head and trying to remember what it is he had to do. There’s a nagging feeling at the back of his mind that keeps pressing him to get up, now, now, _now_. But for the love of Sky and Universe, he can’t think of what it could possibly be. Soon enough, his mind wanders to a different corner and starts musing on his empty stomach that’s begging for a hearty breakfast from his Ma. He wonders if she’s already got the food going or if he should go make cow eyes at her for some gastronomical love.

Danny goes as far, as willing his mind to go a degree closer to consciousness, so he can go eat, when the image of the humanoid figure on fire slams into him like a fright shuttle with unrestricted speed. His eyes spring open and he takes a breath so deep it makes his lungs ache. 

“Hey, buddy. There you are,” Steve says, sounding the slightest bit on edge, but also doing a terrific job of reining it in. From this close, Danny can tell Steve’s got experience keeping it together under pressure; his breathing is measured and regulated, designed to prevent further unravelling.

“Wha—” Danny tries to say, but his throat is parched and his tongue is uncomfortably hot, to the point it feels a bit raw and too wide for his mouth. He clears his throat and tries to swallow past the dryness. “Wha—happen’?”

“Umm… yeah, about that.” Steve flicks his eyes just over Danny’s head and then back to him. “I don’t really know how to explain it.” Steve pauses, looking over and past Danny’s head again. “But the main takeaway is that you’re better now.”

Danny’s curiosity is piqued, and because he has no real survival instinct, he turns his head to a painful degree and tries to make sense of what Steve’s looking at.

Behind him, just under the torched system terminal, is Kono, wrapped in an oversized jacket with an airline logo embroidered on the lapel and out for the count. She’s breathing at least, probably sleeping, like he himself was until a minute ago. Behind her, a black stain of scorched wall shadows her, tall as the ceiling and wide as a door, it holds the general silhouette of the humanoid figure from before.

Danny’s neck twinges so he turns back to Steve, looking for an explanation. “Where did the—” he does a claw with his hand and a quiet roar, “—thing go?”

Steve blinks slowly at him, looks at Kono and then back at Danny. To Danny it feels like he’s trying very hard not to smack him on the back of his pretty head. There’s an intense undercurrent of _something,_ though.

‘ _Maybe fear?_ ’ Danny thinks. And just like that it clicks into place.

Danny’s eyes widen in horror. His heart leaps into overdrive and his skin feels clammy and heavy all the sudden.

“ _What the fuck?_ ” Danny whispers, picking up some momentum for his quick journey to an absolute freak out. “What the actual _fuck?_ ” He pins Steve with his eyes, pleading— _demanding_ an answer! “ _The fuck_ , man, what the shit?! Oh shit.” His heart picks up even more speed. He adds, “this is bad, oh shit, _oh shit._ This is— _what the fuck_. Is she—are _we…_? _Shiiiiiiit_.”

Danny wants to curl into a ball and die, just cease to exist for as long as it takes him to feel human again. But he doesn’t, he tries to remain clear-headed and in place instead. He locks eyes with Steve, who in turn looks like he could down a drink… _or twenty._

There’s a slight shake to Steve’s head, like a subtle denial of what he’s seeing; what lays a few metres away from them, but he plods through.

“She… umm,” Steve starts, trying to figure it out as he puts words together in his head, “for lack of a better word, _transformed_ into the, the… the thing,” he gushes, getting a shade whiter as he says it. He bites lightly over his lower lip before he continues. “But ITA declared you fit for duty before the fire consumed the terminal. I think that whatever she did, cured you.”

_Before Kono… touched him, he was doubling over in pain_ ; an afterimage of his kids and the fire comes to mind.

Danny lifts his t-shirt all the way to his neck, tucking it under his chin and checking his stomach, where most of the pain was focused, but there’s nothing amiss there. Not on the surface anyway. He runs both of his palms down his torso, pressing here and there to make sure his insides have not turned to mush, paying special attention in case there is so much as a twinge of discomfort.

Steve follows Danny’s hands with his eyes, as he drags them all around his body, when Danny does a second pass around his hips, Steve frowns at what he sees in Danny’s belly and slaps his hand away. Steve reaches in and rips the band-aid off in one go, along with a good chunk of Danny’s lower abdomen hair.

“ _Motherfucker!_ The fuck is wrong with you?!” Danny yelps, unable to sit up and throttle the jerk in one go. He takes solace by rubbing his tummy to dissipate the pain. He also stares daggers to Steve’s head.

_The jerk_ , after considering the band-aid for a few more seconds than necessary, comments, “sorry, buddy, I was just trying to be thorough—Is this a kids’ band-aid? I’m sure this is from a cartoon my niece watches.”

“Little shit, you knew that would hurt!” Danny snaps, feeling better by the second, coming back to life by the sheer power of a rant.

Steve smirks and then goes pale and sweaty in the blink of an eye. Behind Danny, Kono stirs to consciousness with a groan fit of a dragon.

“Oh, god, what now?” Danny mutters under his breath, and stretches his hand for Steve to help him up. 

Steve pulls Danny to his feet, steadying him with a hand on his back, and then turns to look at Kono waking up, not really knowing what to expect.

Kono coughs and rubs her eyes, reminding Danny for a split second of his daughter Grace and her constant struggle with mornings (unlike her brother, who needs to be reminded that he should to stay in bed until sunrise). But then, Kono coughs again and an orange-yellow flare snaps from her back, detaching from her body and licking the wall towards the ceiling until it disappears.

Danny can feel pinpricks of sweat breaking all over his body and as he breathes himself back into the present, he realises Steve’s hand is tense and digging the tips of his fingers into the lower muscles of his back, his other hand is gripping Danny’s bicep in a vice. In a way, Steve’s effectively half-hiding behind him, and Danny realises that even though he’s afraid and adjusting to this new normal, Steve’s downright terrified.

“Don’t be afraid, babe,” he pats Steve on his forearm, inadvertently making him lose his grip, “I’m pretty sure she likes us,” he soothes. Feeling a sense of calm take over his mind.

Steve averts his eyes from Kono only to scowl back at Danny. And Danny mock pouts in return, finding an undercurrent of amusement amidst the insanity.

“Hey, guys?” Kono rasps out, finally back to herself. _Well_ , back into the land of consciousness, the other part is to be determined. “Everyone alive?” 

Steve tenses again, standing almost at attention, and Danny turns to check on him, but ends up getting lost in the profile of his face. Steve’s lips are pressed into a thin line, the muscles in his jaw bulge as he grits his teeth, and his eyes are open wide and charged with intent.

_To do what?_ Danny doesn’t know. And it strikes him suddenly, how beautiful Steve is, beyond the first stirrings of interest he had felt earlier, but more like in the way you appreciate a fine work of art.

“You’re very pretty.” Danny blurts out. “Has anyone ever told you that?” Even as he says it he wonders why he’s saying it.

“ _Excuse me_?” Steve demands, craning his neck to look him up and down.

“ _Oh_.” Kono pipes up, incorporating against the wall and smoothing a strand of hair behind her ear. “Did I…?” She starts, but then lets it hang in the air, as she looks down to herself, her lack of clothes and the state of the charred floor.

She frowns.

“I did, didn’t I?” She continues, her face contorting into a sort of apology that would barely cover forgetting to replace the old batteries in a control remote.

Steve bristles, hugging Danny closer to himself. Danny, on his part, sports a bamboozled expression and seems to have disconnected from the conversation altogether.

Steve scowls at Kono. “What did you do to him?”

“Well,” Kono squirms under the jacket, fiddling with the sleeves, “in my defence I was just trying to look at what made him hurt, I didn’t mean to do the other part.”

Steve’s bewilderment at the statement is strong enough that it even manages to knock Danny out of his introversion, not that in converts immediately into active engagement with the world. Steve can tell Danny feels lightheaded and off balance, so he elbows him lightly on his ribs, and Danny blinks in quick succession in response.

“I’m guessing I did an assessment and then cured him?” Kono says sheepishly, adding, “Danny, you’re not feeling anything weird down there? Are you?” She points to Danny’s lower half.

“You’re guessing?” Steve repeats, at the same time Danny exclaims, “WHAT?!” Looking down at his crotch in alarm.

“I meant your knee,” Kono deadpans, and under her breath she whispers, “ _men_.”

“No,” Danny answers, relief washing down his spine and pooling at his feet, “I feel nothing in my knee, it’s metal and servomechanisms. I don’t have proprioception—I guess that’s the right word—no feeling, no cold, no nothing. Just the skin and ligaments on either side, but those are mine.”

As Danny talks, Steve stares him up and down, focusing on his knee without compunction. Danny shudders under the scrutiny.

“Servo- _mecha_ -nisms,” Danny repeats, rolling the word around his tongue, “hmm, such a weird word…” he trails off, suddenly incapable of focusing on Kono or the conversation they were having. Laughter brews in his belly and chest, and he tries very hard not to let it out, even though he feels it bubbling up in his chest—the word. All the words. The _best_ of words. But no, no, _no_ ; it wouldn’t be appropriate under the circumstances.

“ _Appropriate_ ,” Danny whispers, the word slipping past his defences and into the real world. He snorts in amusement covering his mouth with both hands, giving a half-amused-half-panicked look at Kono.

Steve, on his end, frowns at Kono. “ _Wahine_ , I didn’t know him before today,” he points at Danny, “but I’m pretty sure he’s not usually like that. What did you do?”

Kono hisses under her breath, and for a split second her eyes flicker in yellowish and orange hues. “That’s _akua_ for you, brah,” she cautions, going back to her usual relaxed stance once the point is made.

Steve holds his head high, unwilling to be scolded like a child, by a child.

She sighs, looking incredibly put upon, squirms in her place some more, and then stands, letting the jacket slide to the ground. Steve flinches back, flustered by her nudity; his first instinct is to give Kono some privacy, but ends up standing his ground, refusing to let some nakedness distract his focus. Except…

Kono’s dressed. The same clothes she had before she transformed into the fire figure. Steve cocks his head to the side and lets his arms fall to the sides, it’s like somebody is pulling his body in all directions at once in such a balanced way that he’s stuck in place.

Danny does an ugly snort of laughter and tightens his hands over his mouth, there’s tears practically jumping from his eyes as he leans on Steve’s shoulder and starts giggling. It distracts Steve enough to relax by a fraction.

“He’s high,” Kono starts, folding the jacket over her hands, “it’s a side effect of the healing, well,” she pauses, looking down to her hands and then back at them, “over-healing. I kinda over did it.”

Danny doubles over in laughter and falls to the ground, squeezing his belly and heaving lungful after lungful, interspersed with cackles of laughter.

Danny heaves another lungful, deep enough to say, “This is the worst trip of my life.”

Kono smiles sweetly at Danny. Danny cackles again. And Steve whispers under his breath, “You and me both, buddy.” And then promptly sit downs on the floor.


	5. Chapter 5

“So, let me get this straight,” Danny rubs at his forehead, still feeling the aftereffects of his healing-induced high, “you are literally The Golden Child of Oahu, not just because you recently won some sport competition, but because you—you… do that thing.” Danny does a gesture that’s meant to convey fire, combustion and miracles in space all at once (it doesn’t really come across).

“Yes,” Kono answers succinctly, pushing the door with her shoulder again, harder this time.

“Okay, I can live with that.” Danny acknowledges, coming up behind Kono and putting both hands onto the door, “but what about the— you know, healing aspect of the thing.” He grunts the last part as he pushes, but the door won’t budge an inch. “How?”

Kono moves her head from side to side, as if deliberating what to say; what _can_ be said.

She has kept to herself since they both woke up, and the agent side of Danny keeps getting this feeling that she’s scared and doing her top best to put up a calm façade.

Steve yells, “CLEAR!” from the other room, barely poking his head out into the hall and beckoning them to join him inside, successfully derailing the conversation—well, interrogation, considering how many questions Danny asks and how little Kono actually answers.

Kono stays a few steps behind, letting Danny take the lead.

“I found water,” Steve says as they enter, passing them hydration bags and sitting on top of a crate, the one of the two surviving the crash in this room. The excess water has already been absorbed by the drain system on the floor, but the entire place still looks damp. There’s wet viscous stains even in the ceiling.

 _‘At least it’s not blood_ ,’ Danny thinks, and then nods his thanks to Steve, taking both bags and stuffing one in his back pocket.

Kono gives him an indescribable look and a subtle frown forms on her face. She stays near the door, Danny notices, giving him and Steve a wide berth.

“Did you find anything useful?” Steve asks in between slurps of his straw.

“No,” Kono says, struggling to break the seal on her H-bag.

“Here.” Danny takes Kono’s bag leaving his own aside. He takes the tab between his knuckles and gives it a firm tug, passing it back for her to put the straw in. These H-bags have nothing against his juice-box game.

“Okay, but,” Danny starts his previous line of questioning again, after taking a healthy gulp of his bag, “unhelpful doors aside—”

Steve groans and hangs his head between his shoulders. Kono presses her lips into a hint of a smile that quickly tucks back into neutral.

“We’re all from Oahu,” Danny continues, pretending he didn’t see Steve’s reaction, “even though this shuttle had like four stops in the system before we were supposed to get there. Yet, we still somehow manage to cluster together and survive the crash-landing.” Kono and Steve nod noncommittally, though Steve looks miles away from this conversation. “And you and him,” Danny points his thumb into Steve’s direction, addressing the statement to Kono. “You guys already knew each other.”

Steve shakes his head while Kono nods.

“No,” Steve amends, shaking his head harder, “we knew _of each other._ It’s not the same.”

“Fine, whatever; _of_ each other,” Danny corrects, and in his head, he adds a couple of epithets directed at Steve, who has been fixated on precision of the _irrelevant_ facts, more than getting their stories straight, which annoys him to no end. He huffs inwardly.

Kono gives him a side look and does an aborted chortle sound, but ends up choking on water.

“And on top of that,” Danny continues after Kono’s done coughing, keeping an eye on her the whole time the fit lasts, in case another arm of fire decides to detach from her, “you do realise that the crash, the fact she’s _literally_ the golden child—”

“—Ke Keiki Akua Kula,” Kono interjects and slurps the last dregs of her H-bag, passing the second one to Steve for him to break the seal.

Steve takes it, but he does not look impressed.

 _“Gesundheit_ ,” Danny bites back, because _what’s the point_ at this point.

“That’s the proper name, Danny,” Steve nags, around the edge of the hydration bag, sinking a canine into the package and tearing it open. _Savage_.

Danny inhales deeply and takes a second to drink half his bag in one go, feeling parched all the sudden.

“Okay.” Danny tries to remain calm, moving forward with the argument he’s trying to make. “Goddess something with a lower-case _gee_ , because, not an actual deity.” He waves a hand at the length of Kono’s person. “Am I up to date here?” He bites out, letting irritation get the better part of him. Kono moves minutely away from him.

“More or less,” Steve says, nodding his head, while Kono strikes a pose that seems to say ‘ _I’ll allow it_ ’. It doesn’t irk Danny so much this time, her lack of actual answers.

“Fine, good. This is the real question then: Is it not too much of a coincidence? For either of you?” He finally asks, incredulous of their lack of curiosity.

 _“Noooo_ , not at all,” Steve answers, sarcasm dripping from his words.

Danny narrows his eyes at him with lips pressed into a thin line. He wants to say ‘ _you’re not helping Steven’_ , but he had promised himself not to derail the conversation any further by ranting at Lt. Cmdr. McJerk, not after that glorious blow up a few corridors back, after Steve had pretty much _commanded_ Danny and Kono to start a search party for survivors-slash-water-and-food.

Kono grins at the silent exchange.

“What if it’s just a touch of destiny?” she proposes, and Danny slowly turns to squint at Kono now.

“ _Golden child?_ I say moon child,” Danny mutters under his breath, opening his second H-bag and leaning against the door jamb, careful of the part Steve kicked in a few minutes before.

He can practically feel Kono’s disapproval inside his head. He both mean and didn’t mean for Kono to hear that, he doesn’t want to be rude to the person that saved his life, but at the same, he needs answers!

After a beat, Kono declares, “I’m technically a faith-child if it helps.”

“It doesn’t,” Danny sinks into the wall, deliberately sulking now. “It really, _really_ doesn’t.”

All this child talk is reminding him of his own children. They still have another two days before they miss him. He had promised to take them out by the end of the week if —and only if— they behaved with the nanny and at school. He doesn’t want to break his promise.

There’s a brief pause where Danny watches Steve pile H-bags inside one of the intact crates, taking his time to finish off his second bag, more sedately this time. Kono, on her part, pokes destroyed cargo with her foot, pushing smashed bags around and picking up a few salvageable ones in the process, passing them off to Steve to add to the crate box. For some reason, he finds it soothing, even if the whole time he wishes Steve would just stop and fall apart, the way Danny is, slowly slinking off the hinges with every new turn of events.

After he had lost it to the fit of giggles almost an hour before, Kono had explained —very superficially— that she had tried to check on him with stealth, but something had happened and the need to heal had just taken over her.

“It’s like a sneeze sometimes,” she had explained, “I just can’t hold it in.”

(Danny is still trying to digest that titbit of information.)

“Well,” he had commented, “as far as sneezes go, that one was nuclear.”

From that point on he had pretty much surrendered to the bizarre, trying hard not to pay attention to the more compromising aspects of all of this. For one, Kono was not human, not by a long shot, not in the way it counted to the Federation, and her sole presence was outlawed. In fact, his continued stay at her side, in the knowing of her existence, made him complicit; an accessory of sorts.

What’s worse, every now and then, she and Steve exchanged these _looks_ that chipped away at his resolve. The uttered words in ancient tongues that packed a punch, of hope, of strength, of peacefulness. But all of them are very much outlawed, all of them deemed beyond spiritual, and bordering on the edges of religiousness.

But, he could also see the comfort it gave them; belonging to a common ground, to the same way of living. He can’t help to ask himself how they had kept her outside of Federation’s claws all this time. The Federation is relentless and has eyes everywhere, Danny himself could be counted as one of those long reaching arms, depending on who you ask.

 _What a mess of cosmic proportions_.

Even if they get out of this stranded-somewhere-in-space predicament, how is he supposed to move on from this. What does he do? Pretend ‘ _he didn’t see nothing, officer’_? Once he was in front of his superior, being debriefed, playing dumb was not going to be enough.

“ _Worst kept secret in the galaxy._ ” Steve cuts into his reverie, knocking Danny’s shoulder with his own on his way out with a crate filled to the brim with H-bags.

It’s like Steve has read his mind. And there goes another question to the aether. How did Steve go from actual, palpable fear to this cool as a cucumber act, all focused in water, shelter and food?

For a split second, Danny wants to die. But he shakes his head, throws the empty package to the ground and follows suit after Steve. There’s still a few cargo rooms to go through before they reach ITA’s core level to do some reconnaissance of their surroundings and most importantly to get a general look at the state of the ship.

Danny inhales deeply and starts over what he knows about the situation so far. Long-jump, estate-funded shuttle. He’s coming from a different shuttle, told on the fly to deviate from original course, pick up Kono from a competition and escort her back to Oahu, her home.

Kono won the nebulae surf championship, an extreme sport of sorts and needed someone to accompany her back home to celebrate. Steve’s going back home after spending a good decade abroad in between deployments and training. He also found out this guy’s a SEAL; Space, Ether, Aircraft & Land, which is incredible and an amazing feat, and hopefully his fine honed skills will help to get them out of here.

Danny purposefully drops his shoulders, forcing himself to relax and go over all the titbits of information again as he helps Steve wheel a cart with three crates filled with loot from the other corridors, and then he says, “let’s start from the top again.”

They’re on their way to check the lower levels and the engines. Keep on checking for survivors, though so far, they have found none, and only four more corpses other than the one Danny found outside of sickbay. There’s something seriously wrong with this picture.

Kono falls back in step with them, eyeing Danny with something akin to fatigue, but waits for him to continue nonetheless. Steve just pushes the cart harder, irritation washing over his face, though he swallows it back quickly enough.

“From the top: Steve here, is coming back to the System after years and years off-planet to go check on his dad, who’s had a brush with death,” Danny states, matter-of-factly. Steve huffs in exertion, and presses his lips into a thin line. “Nothing? Seriously?” He nags at Steve, trying to gain some of his attention, shoulder-checking him gently.

“No, man, we’ve already been over this.”

Steve sounds the tiniest bit exasperated to Danny’s ears, but this is important.

Steve does a grand-eye roll befitting of a dramatic teenager and says, “Yes, my father was mugged. Yes, it was bad. No, he didn’t know I would come back because of that. I didn’t know I was going back home until yesterday.” Steve stops pushing and rubs at his forehead. They want to check the engine room at the end of the hallway, but it’s still a good trek away. 

“It’s too—” Danny cuts himself, waving his hands around and then holding onto the cart again. He’s as frustrated with this exercise of futility as everyone else. “We’re missing something. I know we are.” Danny bites the tip of his thumb. “Kono,” he calls, turning to her, “when did you know you would be taking this shuttle?”

Kono shrugs.

“Maybe a week ago? It was arranged with the championship passes and everything else.”

She breaks away from the group to push at a door and see if it will open, when it doesn’t she bangs on it with her fist, yelling for somebody in there.

There’s no response but the echo of the hallway.

“Did you know a week ago you would get to the finals?” Danny asks.

Kono frowns in response.

“Okay,” Danny says, “I’ll take that as you being offended, and that you hoped, but you didn’t know.”

“I knew I was going to stay and catch up with friends regardless of the results. My whole entourage went back ahead of me for the same reason,” she elaborates further.

“And then,” Danny starts where Kono left off, “I was sent to accompany you, I was already on route from a different outpost. I’m doing small jobs here and there as they finish processing my transfer. In fact, the governor called me, and personally asked me to escort you; so you wouldn’t be alone in your glory,” he trails off, already moving on to a different train of thought.

“Who’s governor anyway?” Steve interjects. “Not that old-fart still, is he?”

“ _Who?_ ” Kono asks, at the same time Danny turns to Steve and answers, “Jameson.”

“Jameson?” Steve parrots back. “ _Pat_ Jameson?”

Danny hones in into Steve’s tone as Kono nods her head, confirming his guess.

“Yeah, Patricia Jameson,” Kono reaffirms after a quick pause on their exchange.

“Auntie Pat is the governor?” Steve asks, distressed.


	6. Chapter 6

 

“Auntie Pat is governor?” Steve asks, distressed.

“Why would you— _Steven!_ ” Danny whips his head into Steve’s direction. “Is Governor Jameson related to you?!”

Steve swallows convulsively and his entire demeanour stutters.

“Umm, no,” Steve starts, “not by blood, but, you know, she’s close.” He shuffles on his feet. “She’s friends with my father actually. I remember her coming over when I was a kid.” He steals a glance at Kono, who—in his opinion—looks as he feels.

“Is this who we all have in common?” Danny mutters to himself, giving a half-pout and pinching his lip softly in between his fingers, already thinking three or five steps ahead about the implications of such a plot to get rid of them all. There’s a stab of worry at the thought that his children might be in danger, but he shakes it off, there’s nothing he can do from here, and Rachel is a fierce mother who would do anything possible (and the impossible!) to protect their children, too.

Steve, on the other hand, bristles at his words. “We can’t know for sure that she’s involved,” he protests, taking a step closer to Danny, bringing them a few inches away.

Kono shakes her head, mentally taking a step back, there’s too many ideas flooding her head at once.

“I know the Governor only through sports related events,” Kono says, answering ahead of what Danny had been thinking to ask. “She doesn’t know that I’m… well—she _could_ know, but _I didn’t tell her_.”

“So, what? Coincidence?” Danny asks, affronted by the notion, turning his back on Steve and ignoring the annoyed huff he gets in response. “What is it they used to say in the old days? Two is a coincidence, three is a pattern?” The rest he directs at Steve. “Just because she changed your nappies doesn’t mean she can’t somehow be involved, you know?”

Steve furrows his brow and bristles further. “Are you sure you’re a special agent?” He asks, crossing his arms over his chest. Danny can feel the waves of anger coming off from him.

“Yeah,” Danny stands taller, holding his ground, “I’m also trying to make sense of this, I’m sorry if my questions are too much for you to handle. That’s what we; special agents, do. In case you were wondering.”

“Oh, no, please, don’t get me wrong.” Steve tightens his arms. “It’s not the questions, it’s the jumping to conclusions.”

Danny huffs and jabs a finger into Steve’s chest, but doesn’t get to accompany the act with a much-deserved colourful reply, because Kono cuts in.

“Boys,” Kono starts, placating; sensing the situation’s potential to escalate, “relax, okay? This is helping no one, so just _relax_.”

It’s like her words hang in the air, palpable and thick. Steve’s shoulders drop as if on command, and then his face goes slack; his body flooding with a sense of calm he doesn’t remember feeling in a long time. He looks at Danny in a daze, noting the sudden serenity of his posture, mere moments after Steve ( _kinda)_ insulted his profession.

“What the hell?” Steve wonders out loud, using up all that’s left of his annoyance. It still comes out mild and subdued.

“Oh,” Danny comments, “I thought it was just me.” He blinks owlishly at Steve, just noticing how close they are, how warm Steve feels. With a sigh, he turns his head to Kono, and asks, “Was it a sneeze again?”

Kono covers her face with her hand and groans. If Danny didn’t know better, he would say she’s got a sudden migraine.

Steve, on the other hand, leans closer to Danny and gives his goofiest smile. (Steve  frowns internally, but no matter how hard he tries, the frown doesn’t form on the outside).

Danny smooths his t-shirt down the front, and steps to Steve’s side, so they are both facing Kono. “ _It was_ a sneeze, wasn’t it? C’mon, spit it out,” Danny asks placidly, following Steve’s warmth and leaning on him.

Kono buries her fingers in her hair, but doesn’t say anything.

“I think I can’t feel my face,” Steve comments, caressing his left cheek with one hand and looping the other around Danny’s waist.

Danny smirks. “It’s called relaxation. Enjoy it, babe.” To Kono, he says, “As for you, young lady, what’s going on?” He sounds stern, but the satisfied smile that comes after betrays the intent.

Kono uncovers her face and sighs, much like a despondent teenager. She shrugs her shoulders, struggles for words, and then blows a raspberry in frustration.

She tries from the top one more time. “I hit my head on the way down,” she confesses, “I’m a bit spaced out at times. And I’ve got a headache.” Kono draws a breath that’s meant to steady her, and sighs again. “I think it might be affecting my abilities.”

“ _Ya think?_ ” Danny grumbles, mildly.

Kono does a ‘ _whatcha gonna do_ ’ gesture in response that reminds Danny of his youngest sister.

“How do you do it?” Steve asks, though it is not clear who he’s talking to. He looks positively sleepy now. “How come you’re not,” he waves his hand back and forth between them, all three of them, “ _relaxed_ , like me.”

Danny snorts in amusement. “I have two kids, babe, a teenager and a toddler, trust me, this is me relaxing and enjoying it. Kono is like the definition of chill, so I don’t know about her.”

Kono groans. “Look, I’m sorry, you need to—”

“No!” Danny cries out, at the same time Steve lifts an arm and mumbles something, though the ‘opposing’ sentiment is there. The important thing is, they cut Kono off before she tells them to _chill_ , or _loosen up,_ or something equally calming that would land them in a heap of snores on the floor. Or worse.

Kono groans again and covers her face with both her hands. Steve chuckles at nothing and Danny burrows further under Steve’s expansive one-armed hug.

“Let’s just keep going,” Kono offers after a few seconds.

And Danny adds, “in silence,” tugging at Steve’s shirt to get him going; the cart won’t wheel itself down the corridor.

The effect of Kono’s words last for another ten minutes. Just long enough to accompany them through the last of the corridor, and the revelation of the engine room. The place they needed to see to decide whether they could put this ship back into space or what.

When they had first established the priorities of their search, Steve had said, in a sober, ominous tone, “Let’s be clear, without a crew, it is not looking very good for us. Getting the ship up and running is one thing, pilot it through the ether and back home, that’s another beast entirely.”

So, three hours later, finally at the very door of their moment of truth, Danny finds himself wishing for a small miracle.

There are no miracles.

It is, however, a small mercy they’re still under Kono’s spell when they cross the threshold into the engine room. They are greeted by a snarled mess of cables and circuitry poking from the mainframe. The overhead lights have some power to them, though intermittent, which is nor here nor there in defining their immediate future. There’s scuffing marks on the floor and the engineer’s chair is upturned, yet no trace of the engineer herself. Behind the mainframe’s console, the window to the lower decks of the warp-engine is clouded with smoke. _And what do you know_ , there are small miracles after all, just not the ones Danny was asking for, as the entire thing hasn’t gone up in flames, _yet_.

“Fuck me,” Kono whispers as she contemplates the mess, her eyes getting shinny and wet.

Danny gives her an annoyed look and throws his hands in the air, suppressing the need to scream, whilst Steve grabs the railing so hard it creaks, pressing his lips together.

Kono realises what she just said; her eyes widen at the same time she takes a step back with her left foot, taking a rather casual fighting stance. It doesn’t fool Danny though. A young woman that can turn into a fireball, is bound to have fighting moves out of this world; pun somewhat intended.

Danny raises both his hands, practically sinking into his joints to make himself look smaller, less threatening, trying to defuse the situation. Trying to show her how unaffected they are.

“Nothing here,” Danny says, eyeing Steve to further assess the situation, only to discover him grabbing the railing for dear life, looking far more spooked than Kono herself. Danny’s fairly sure Kono could take Steve with her pinkie finger and not even break a sweat.

“You okay there, big guy?” Danny asks in a neutral tone, channelling all the zen he had felt a minute ago.

Steve nods as he says, “Yeap,” but doesn’t let go of the railing. He can’t keep control of himself. Ever since Kono transformed in front of his eyes his emotions are running wild and he keeps getting flooded by the most anguishing fear he’s ever felt before. He’s served the Federation for almost twenty years, and he has seen a lot, but nothing like Kono’s abilities, no one as strong. He tries to take a deep breath, but it comes in fits, so he tries again.

Danny can’t help noticing Steve’s tightness around his mouth, how wide his eyes are, almost unblinking, pupils blown. Caught in the headlights of Kono’s presence.

“Kono,” Danny says to get her attention. He wants to ask about Kono’s abilities again, if it is possible for her to project feelings on others, as well as _very strong_ suggestions. The idea is still forming in his head, when Kono answers to his unformulated question.

“I don’t know, Danny. Why?”

It reminds Danny of that tense moment, when he had been about to ask about Kono’s more personal connection with the governor, and Kono had offered the information unprompted. He had chalked it to good detective skills on her part, but maybe not so much.

“What the—” Steve trails off, letting the railing go and staring at them, bordering into ‘terrified’ territory. He tries to control his breathing again, with marginally better results this time.

Danny groans at the ceiling. The situation just keeps getting more and more complicated by the minute! If this were a book it would be ridiculous!

Kono nods, dropping her hands, but still tense enough that she could rip them both to pieces if she chose to.

‘ _Kono,_ ’ he asks in his head, _thinks_ it to her, ‘ _can you read minds?_ ’

‘ _Yeah,_ ’ she answers in her head. Danny nods trying to comprehend. ‘ _And you just read mine,_ ’ she adds. Danny looks up sharply at that, a shot of adrenaline humming through his body.

Steve whimpers behind them, his body starting to shiver beyond his control.

‘ _Does that mean that Steve can hear them too?_ ’ Danny muses and mentally shakes himself. ‘ _Priorities, Danny!_ ’

“Tell him to relax,” Danny says, dreading the possibility of breaking Steve because of some—some—some telepathic fear-loop of sorts.

“What?” She says, shaking her head, uncomprehending Danny’s deliberations.

He tries to conjure up his train of thought in an order that suggests ‘ _highly trained Federation war-machines don’t get spooked, ergo, something’s wrong_ ’ and pushes the images and feelings to her, hoping they make enough sense to her in that state of dream-like frenzy, for he’s sure he shouldn’t say all of that in front of Steve and add more urgency to his plight.

Kono’s posture changes minutely, acquiring an aura of authority, her eyes are ablaze as she whispers something that pierces through Danny’s body and lands squarely onto Steve’s chest.

A surprised, “oh,” escapes Steve’s lips as he slides down to the floor with a contented sigh.

“You would make a killing in a carnival,” says Danny as he walks to Steve and waves a hand in front of his eyes. Steve is barely responsive.

“Thanks,” Kono says with hesitation, “I think.”

“If it makes a positive difference, I meant it as a compliment.”

Danny sits next to Steve, absentmindedly grabbing his hand and rubbing it in between his own. His thoughts are running wild. His heart is trying to escape the insanity and jump out through his throat. His stomach is churning, knotting and unknotting itself, the muscles rippling under his t-shirt. He takes Steve’s hand to calm him down, as much as to soothe himself.

Kono eyes the window behind her suspiciously, you don’t have to be an engineer to understand smoke in the engine bay is not good. It means a whole lot of redundant safety measures had to fail to get there. She straightens the fallen chair and plumps in it.

 _‘And where the hell is everybody?!’_ She screams in her head, making Danny wince in sympathy, because first, _yes_ , good question, where the fuck are they? And secondly, how the fuck are they getting out of here.

“Before you say anything,” she starts, “I’m freaked out too. Nothing like this has happened before. And I can’t get a hold of my powers, I can tell some of them are quietly doing something in the background, but I—” Kono looks the other way and sniffs, composing herself before she loses it.

“Well,” Danny drawls, exhausted, “this one’s a first for me, too. The big lug here, I don’t know.” He observes the way Steve’s eyelids flutter, trying to stay awake. He squeezes his hand in support. “So, I’m gonna ask one more time.” He points a finger into Kono’s direction. “Is there anything else, _at all_ , that we should know before we continue? Please think it through this time, leave nothing out, yeah?”

Kono shakes her head, her eyes wide. Danny dials down the intensity inside his head.

He takes a deep breath. “Why do you think your powers are bleeding all over us? I mean, I can hear what you are thinking, if you’re loud enough, and now, if I concentrate I can sort of _feel_ you. And Steve’s clearly on the receiving end of our worries. Why?”

“Bad luck, brah.” Kono shrugs her shoulders and does a lopsided smile. She looks way younger than she is, well, Danny assumes she’s a lot younger than he is at least.

“Bad luck, huh?” Danny echoes, biting his lower lip briefly before saying, “Well, as my late father used to say: bad luck, good luck; nobody knows.”

Kono frowns, like she’s not buying into his father’s words.

“It’s part of a bigger story,” Danny explains, “he said it was an Old-Earth Chinese proverb, you know?” He pauses, considering. “Or maybe he made it up, who knows with my old man.”

“What do we do now?” Kono sits up straighter, reading herself to work.

Danny looks beside him, where Steve’s dozing, and around the room. Other than the trashed mainframe console, there’s a smaller console to the side, like the one he had consulted in the hallway a lifetime ago, but not much else.

“Let’s see if we can gather more intel about where we are. If there’s a station close. Send an SOS signal. Something. Check if there’s a distress beacon as well.”

Kono nods, clapping her hands on her knees as she gets up.

“Good, we have a plan,” he says with finality, giving one last squeeze to Steve hands before he stands up. 


	7. Chapter 7

Danny taps under the screen to release the keyboard. The system immediately boots up and a disembowelled deep voice comes through the PA system embedded in the wall.

“ _Welcome, Master and Commander Williams._ ” This time the voice has a distinct northern accent.

To his side, Kono mouths ‘master and commander’ to herself and nods in a way that’s meant to convey ‘ _unbelievable_ ’. To Danny, her words and sentiment, feel like a distant echo inside his head.

“I really hope this reading minds thing isn’t permanent,” he comments dryly, without looking away from the screen.

Kono hums in response, agreeing.

STATE YOUR QUERY, reads the screen.

“ITA,” Danny commands, “search for life signals aboard.”

The cursor starts blinking on the screen, a summary of the different wings and rooms ITA is looking at with each passing second.

“Shouldn’t we have done this before?” Kono asks, studying the screen along Danny.

“I broke the keyboard, remember?” Danny lifts an eyebrow. “And then Steve came, and then you came, and then I passed out. The console didn’t survive you, afterwards,” he summarises, and then bites his upper lip and pouts at the same time. It feels like a lifetime ago.

“It feels like a lifetime ago,” Kono echoes out loud.

Danny wishes she would stop, but he doesn’t think she’s doing it consciously. Kono hums under her breath, almost like she’s acknowledging his thoughts.

_Eerie_.

The PA beeps, marking the end of the search. There is only one life signal identified. The screen shows the profile of _C. Sativa_ , followed by a photograph in the vibrant green hues of said species.

“Aaaah,” Kono drawls, knowingly, mimicking dragging from the butt of a cigarette pinched in between index and thumb, “ _pakalolo_.”

Danny side eyes her, but refuses to be derailed from his task. Kono frowns at the screen and the C. Sativa’s profile (Provenance: _unknown_. Owner: _unknown_ ).

“ITA,” Danny continues, “show me the profiles of Kono Kalakaua, Lieutenant Commander Steven McGarrett, and mine, Special Agent Daniel Williams.”

The screen scrolls through the manifest of the ship, highlighting their names and showing the three basic profiles of Kono Kalakaua, professional surfer (status: unknown). Daniel Williams, Federation’s Special Agent, Class B (status: in transfer from New New Jersey). And finally, Steven J. McGarrett, Space Programme Lieutenant Commander (status: on personal leave). Underneath each of their names, in red bold letters, it reads “DECEASED”.

“Well, fuck,” Danny exclaims. The PA system beeps demerits, and the voice tuts at him in a disappointed tone, but Danny couldn’t care less now.

He runs his fingers through his hair, not that it was getting in his eyes; it’s more like a nervous tick of his. To his side, Kono does almost the same, running her fingers to the side of her head, brushing her hair behind her ear.

“But we are not—” Kono starts and stops, shaking her head. She starts again, “A travelling assistant failing is unheard of.” She puts her hands on her hips. “It doesn’t happen. They can get disconnected from the central, but not—”

“ITA,” Danny interrupts Kono’s musings. “How did we—how did they die?”

Kono shuts her mouth with a click as she reads… basically their obituaries on screen.

FATAL EXPLOSION OF CARGO SHUTTLE: HOKU’AE’A, ID TAG#HK2106-99, IN TRANSIT FROM NEBULAE PARADISE TO OAHU SYSTEM. REMAINS LOCATION: UNKNOWN. FUNERAL DATE: UNDETERMINED. NUMBER OF FATALITIES IN TOTAL: 177.

Sweat breaks on Danny’s hairline and down his back.

“ _A hundred and seventy-seven?!_ Are you freaking kidding me?!” Kono bristles, leaning into the screen like the number would change if she stares at it hard enough. “Even before the crash I barely saw twelve people!!”

Danny has the urge to touch her to calm her down, but he doesn’t think Kono would appreciate being touched without ample warning first. He clears his throat instead and pushes a bunch of soft, fuzzy thoughts on her direction. She turns her head and squints at him, but stands down, so it must have at least gotten the general message across.

He inhales deeply, taking a page out of his own book, trying to slow down as well. It is not as easy as he would like, though, he’s getting annoyed at all the inconsistencies and every piece of the ship falling off and crapping out on them.

“ITA,” he says, loud and clear, trying to clarify somewhat this puzzle, “who am I?”

As the answer formulates on screen, Kono taps her fingernail on the edge of the keyboard set.

MASTER AND COMMANDER WILLIAMS, SIR. AT YOUR SERVICE.

He scoffs at the screen. Kono on her part, glares lasers at the terminal.

“This is weird, brah,” she comments, “like, beyond the level of weird I’m used to.”

Danny quirks his head and concedes the point, because it’s going to be hard to determine a basal level for weird from now on, and he figures from what he’s seen so far, Kono’s level must be way higher, like in a logarithmic scale.

“ITA,” Danny says, already tired of this, “identify my life signal in the room.”

The cursor blinks on screen, but nothing happens. The screen glitches and then: UNKNOWN ERROR. PLEASE STATE YOUR QUERY.

“Why is it doing that?” Kono asks, both hands at her hips, ready to give the console a good thrashing for their troubles.

“I don’t know, babe. I think—”

“It’s been tampered with,” a raspy voice calls from behind them. _Steve._

Danny’s body tenses and a shock of electricity runs through his spine. “For fuck’s sake, don’t you know how to make noise, Steven?! Clear your fucking throat first! Or something.”

Belatedly, Danny realises Kono had grabbed his arm for dear life, while the other was clenched into a fist.

Danny shakes his head.

“No, not again,” Danny says, referring to the major freak out of before. “Let’s all relax, okay?” He looks from Steve to Kono. “Let’s all just take a deep breath and go to our happy place.” He takes a deep breath and holds it, moving his hands along to demonstrate the exercise.

“I wasn’t asleep,” Steve says. Brushing his eyes like he’s just waking up from a long nap. Danny finds it endearing. “I mean I heard you. The mind reading, the fear, I get it.” He nods along his own words, reinforcing just how much he gets it. “For some reason, I was taking in all your worries, but now that I know, it won’t get as bad.”

Danny frowns. It would be a lot more convincing if Steve didn’t look like a rumpled Teddy Bear.

“How can you be so sure?” Danny asks.

“What?” Steve says, at the same time Kono says, “Fair question.”

“For real?” Steve asks and Danny nods in response, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Because I’m trained for it, Daniel. And now that I know, I’ll be expecting it. That’s why.”

Danny mulls over Steve’s answer for about two seconds and then says, “okay, fine.” He’s got bigger fish to fry here.

“What?” Steve’s lips tilt up around the corners. “Just like that?”

Danny smiles in return. “Yeah, just like that, you goof.”

“Seriously?” Steve crosses his arms over his chest, loosely, and levels Danny with _a look_. “From you?”

“ _Yeah, from me_.” Danny rushes to answer, and then, “Wh—Why, did I hit a nerve there, babe?” He smiles wider, pointing at himself with both hands. Teasing. Something inside him hums in pleasure.

“ _Oy_ ,” Steve grumbles, but leaves it at that, turning to the console and typing a string of codes, faster than Danny can follow. Indistinguishable from smashing the keys at random, to Danny at least.

Kono shuffles on her feet, clearly forgotten by the other two, she looks from Danny to Steve and back, squinting her eyes.

On the screen, the cursor blinks a few times, sluggish, and then strings upon strings of code run over the screen, clearing the basic safe mode, and loading all the typical graphics of a vessel’s interface. It beeps a few times, does some more loading and finally reads: LOCATION: KEPLER SYSTEM. PLANET 186F. UNOCCUPIED. ORIGINAL SETTLEMENTS STILL STANDING.

“Oh,” Kono exclaims, almost like a gulping sound.

“That’s the very edge of the Federation, Steven,” Danny whispers, “How the fuck did we get here?”

“ITA, show travel path from nebulae paradise,” Steve commands to the travelling assistant, taking a step back from the console.

The PA system comes on-line and announces to the room in a grave voice, the northern accent thickening: “Forbidden command. Only authorised personnel allowed.”

Steve presses his lips into a thin line and motions for Danny to ask ITA for the information. It’s obvious that not being officially in charge rubs him the wrong way. Kono bites her tongue, though the light in her eyes speaks volumes of her amusement.

“ITA.” Danny tries this time. “Show me the travel path from nebulae paradise.”

The cursor flies across the screen, writing: UNKNOWN ERROR. PLEASE STATE YOUR QUERY.

There’s a collective groan in the room.

Danny feels something like a pinch inside his mind. Like a pain that isn’t there, an afterimage. He realises Kono’s getting frustrated again.

“Chill, babe,” he says to her, as he fiddles with the keyboard again, trying to bring up a map of the place.

“Who you talking to?” Steve and Kono ask in unison, squinting at each other over Danny’s head once they realise they spoke as one.

Danny stops typing and stares at his reflection on the screen, poking around the mind-pinch to examine it closer.

“Both of you, actually,” he answers, looking down to the keyboard again, tapping the right symbols for the map to show on screen.

Steve looks affronted and Kono does a “ _huh_ ” sound.

Danny keeps on typing until a bunch of options for plans open.

“One, eight, six, eff, right?” Danny asks without looking, waiting for a confirmation to pull up the pertinent information and hoping it has enough details to be of use.

“Yeah,” Kono says, so Danny taps the screen for the required information, and a bunch of files open in cascading windows. The first one is clearly labelled “186F main military defence points”.

“Ha! Eureka!”

“ _Eureka?_ ” Steve drawls.

“Old-Earth mathematician.” Steve draws a blank and his face reflects it. “Volume?” Danny waves his hands around. “Displacement of water? In a tub? You know? The old way of getting clean?” He mimes scrubbing one of his arms.

“Oh, please don’t tell me you’re one of those Old-Earth lovers?” Steve smirks.

Danny weeps for the short collective memory of humanity.

“I’m not. But I do know my facts. I come from the New New Jersey system, and we have the highest concentration of vintage-Earth fans in there. And the biggest convention a few systems around.”

“Oh, fancy,” Kono deadpans, mocking, as Steve swallows a laugh.

“Alright, Earth-boy.” Steve smacks Danny in the shoulder. “Show us what you got.”

Danny taps on the first map, showing them the general view of the main civil settlement, a hybrid between human and the other civilisations’ tech and architecture. Mostly elongated buildings that look unnatural to the human eye; too tall where they should be closer to the ground, and too narrow, where they should be wide.

The town’s square has a smallish roofed porch, like an Old-Earth musical stage at a plaza, except the roof is made of a shimmery material, like nacre shining in the sun, and the whole square is arranged in the faint shape of a conch shell. A few decades ago, one of these pictures had leaked, causing an uproar throughout the Federation, several resistance groups popping up in all corners of the human settlements, raging for the equality of all civilisations’ rights. The Universe was not a happy place during that time. 

Danny shakes himself internally and walks them through the maps he could pull up, showing them those settlements and defence positions the system shows closer to the ship. Steve claps him on the back and gives him a proud smile.

Kono, amazed at what she’s seeing, whistles proud of Danny and says, “From now on, you can say eureka all you want, Danny.” In her line of work, she’s had the opportunity of vast travels, but what she’s looking at right now is ancient history. It’s censored history too. Not the kind of stuff you learn at school.

Her hand reaches to screen, but she ends up clenching it securely on the edge of the keyboard, swallowing her emotions and trying to project and aura of peace around her. They can’t afford to collectively freak out again.

Steve clears his throat and points to a dot on the screen, tapping on it to open the details. It’s a warehouse for old crafts that lists three old jumpers in store.

“Jumpers?” Danny asks.

“Jumpers,” Steve says, confident of himself.

Kono holds up a hand and asks, “and for those of us not in the know of Fed lingo?”

“Oh, you’re going to hate this,” Danny grumbles, and then does a double take at Kono, and rolls his eyes. “ _What am I saying?_ You surf space in a flimsy piece-of-shit ship that’s controlled at random by solar flares, you’re going to _love_ this!” He throws up his hands and walks away from the console, all the way to the engineer’s chair where he plops down with a huff.

Steve pulls up a photo of said jumpers, stepping aside to show it to her; they have elongated blades on top, that flow over the cabin by their own weight. And the cabin looks rudimentary at best, with huge holes on each side that would do nothing to keep the atmosphere in once in space. Kono’s eyes sparkle with enthusiasm.

“Oh!” she says, “I’m definitely up for it.”


	8. Chapter 8

“ITA—” Steve starts and then deflates, annoyed with himself for forgetting. He turns around and motions at Danny to come closer. “Ask her if we have working vehicles to get there. To the jumpers outside.”

“ _Her?_ ” Danny questions, leaning back on the engineer’s chair.

Steve squints at Danny. “Yes ‘her’, I’ve always thought of travelling assistants as _hers._ Not that you need to know, it’s not like it’s a bad thing.” He crosses his arms over his chest.  

“Well.” Kono cuts in, amused. “It certainly isn’t good.”

“Oh, give me a break, the carrier I served in had an TA with a woman’s voice. I got used to it. I say it with love, okay?” Steve shuffles on his feet, tightening his arms, not ready to defend his fond memories as a newly minted Ensign.

“Yeah, okay.” Danny chuckles. “As your friend, I advise you to stop talking, babe.” He gets up and walks up to Steve, still smiling. “Something else? To ask ITA I mean?”

Steve shakes his head, his lips in a tight line, going for stern, but the lack of a frown and his open posture gives him away.

“ITA,” Danny commands, “how many vehicles do we have on board.”

The PA system is, for once, completely silent. Not even the stirrings of static.

“ITA?” He tries again. “Are you there?”

More silence.

He exchanges a look with Kono and Steve.

“What’s broken now?” Kono asks in a monotone.

“Take a pick,” Danny says, eyeing the window into the engine room.

The smoke has already covered three quarters of the window, building from the bottom up, but there’s no signs of flames (yet). They still have some time left.

“Okay, fine,” Kono says, trying to focus on solutions instead of the problems. “How do we get there, then?”

Danny sighs and taps the screen with three fingers, twice, bringing up a map that shows the ship in relation to the rest of the planet, the warehouse, the main communications building, the town square.

“Well,” Danny says, squinting at the screen, “if I’m reading this map correctly, we could actually walk there.” He taps a few more commands on screen, rotating the map to his satisfaction with both hands and then waiting patiently as the system renders the terrain in between them and their objective in 3D.

The walk would be almost flat, except for the last part of the trek, which has a slight inclination upwards, but nothing too hard on the knees. It should take them no more than an hour, maybe less.

Steve clicks his tongue behind him and Danny turns to glare at him, annoyed at the sudden interruption, but also annoyed by something foreign, as if once again he’s borrowing from somebody else’s emotions. Steve doesn’t go as far as hanging his head in between his shoulders, but it’s a close thing.

Danny frowns. If Steve could just get out and say it, it would be great.

Kono, squints at the screen and clicks her tongue as well, picking up on Steve’s train of thought and pointing the problem at Danny on the screen: a squiggly triangle on the bottom left that’s meant to serve as an alert.

“What’s this? A warning for fleas? Why would they make it so small?” Danny bitches at no one in particular, just noticing the red triangle. He sends a mental litany of curses to the interface designer, and taps his knuckle against the screen in derision, which the system recognises as a request for information. The details of the warning open into a pop-up window.

O2 DEPLETED: 20% LESS THAN OPTIMAL.

“Well, shit,” Danny swears, sharp and tired, echoing Steve’s and Kono’s sentiment.

Steve takes over the keyboard and pulls up further information on the warning.

Not much else comes along. Last time the atmosphere was tested, many decades after people left the planet, was almost forty years ago. The depletion had been clocked at 6% back then (the reason they had to leave), and the 20% was a projected model.

‘ _No live-information feed on this thing either, great_ ,’ Steve thinks, and scrubs his face.

Danny flinches when Steve’s frustration washes over him, settling into the room like a fourth palpable presence. He has to restrain the impulse to turn around, and smack the frustration back to where it came from.

“Shouldn’t we have suits on board?” Kono asks, feeling Danny’s tight control over his emotions and the tiredness behind it all. Steve’s frustration, on the other hand, takes a step back and starts puddling on the floor.  She tries to keep her own weariness out of the mix.

“We should,” Steve says, already thinking where would be the most appropriate place to store such a thing. Even if a cargo ship has suits, he would be surprised if they have more than two.

He frowns so hard it aches.

“ _Oy_ , brah,” Kono grumbles at Steve, rubbing her chest, “you’re bringing me down, stop it.”

Steve’s eyes flash in remorse for a fraction of a second, before he presses them shut, covering his face with one hand, and emerging from the gesture more in control of himself.

Danny tucks the tip of his tongue in between his upper teeth and lower lip. He happens to know where there’s a couple of suits they could use.

“I guess we’re going for a moonwalk, then?” Danny says, with zero enthusiasm.

“Terraformed planet, actually,” Steve corrects, automatic and smug.

Danny gives a long-suffering sigh, like he had had to deal with this level of pedantry every day for years before Steve came along.

“Seriously? Guys, we need suits, like yesterday.” Kono tries to steer the conversation back to something sensible.

Danny raises his hand and points back to the door to the engine room; back to the hall where Kono healed him; back to the sickbay he came from.

“I know where we can get suits,” he says, taking in Steve and Kono’s surprised faces.

The march to sickbay had been like taking a walk back in time. The scorched mark in the hall, the ruined console, the blood all over the hall adjacent to the infirmary, the crushed body of a steward right at the door.

When they cross the bloody hall, Kono grabs his arm and squeezes it fiercely, her mind going blank with horror. Steve takes point and as soon as he rounds the corner, Danny can hear him suck in air through his teeth at the sight of the mangled body.

Danny sends a distant apology to Kono, for what they are about to see. Kono leans closer into his space, leaning her face into his shoulder and squeezing her eyes shut. Danny pats her in reassurance wherever he can reach and then covers her face with his hand, squeezing past Steve who’s checking the body, for what he’s not sure, maybe an ID.

Once they have all pooled into the room, Danny motions for Steve to get the door, to spare Kono some of the gore.

Kono sends her gratitude into the airwaves and shudders once she’s sure Steve has put the body out of view. 

Since ITA has finally expired, there’s no way to open the hidden cupboard in sickbay, other than taking a metal bar (or something) to it and wrench it open. Danny’s hands are sweaty as he picks up the makeshift crowbar, the same one he used to get himself out a handful of hours before. He pries open the suit compartment with two sharp jabs and the automatic retractors immediately give way, making the bar slip from his grip and sink deep into his right hand.

“ _Sonuvabitch_! Fuck, shit! That hurts,” Danny swears left and right, clutching his hand where the metal sliced it open, desperately trying to press it closed and stop the bleeding.

Kono walks up to him, taking his hand in her hands, making soothing noises with her voice and in her mind.

Steve reaches to Danny as well, but notes Kono’s already doing everything that can be done for him. In fact, she’s the only one that could basically revive one of them if something happened. His skills are better used somewhere else. He decides to tidy up their equipment instead, especially considering their time must be running out if ITA is completely out (it means the fire must be spreading in the lower decks, and/or through the electrical wiring).

Steve steps past Kono and Danny, making room for himself in front of the cupboard and riffling through the suits. He makes sure at least three are complete and ready to use, making an effort to block Danny and Kono from his mind, even if his heart is racing from the sight of Danny’s blood hitting the floor. He hasn’t got this flustered since he was a green Lieutenant on his first ground commission.

“Do you want me to…?” Kono asks, unsure of what Danny’s reaction will be.

“Do I want you to…?” Danny hesitates, needing to look up from his hand to make sense of what Kono’s asking, and when he does, he gets angry. “No, I don’t want you to! We’ll end up with freaking horns on our foreheads if we keep doing this—of course I don’t want you to!” Danny yells, clutching his hand back to his chest, blood flowing sluggishly from the space between his thumb and index finger.

“Do I have a choice, though?! I don’t think so! Because I—” He interrupts himself, his nerve endings firing up in agony and sending even more alarms flaring throughout his body. “Fuck, I need to sit down, I’m going to be sick.”

Kono coos at him softly, rubbing his shoulders and studying the floor for some medical tape and cleaning solution to bandage Danny’s hand.

Steve notes Danny distress, like a chord pulling from his back and belly in different directions, and decides for them what to do next. He gets Kono’s attention and in one look, gives her a piece of his mind, what the priorities should be.

Before Danny can make sense of the compact thought going on between them, Kono’s eyes are ablaze, her hands go from warm to scorching, and there’s an electric shock to his system, that feels more like adrenaline and fear, than surprise, followed immediately by calmness, tenderness and inner peace. It feels like being held by a solid and tangible representation of love. From behind his eyelids he can see his tutor from sixth grade pointing to the screen and saying “ _oxytocin is the hormone of true love._ ” His lips stretch into a warm smile.

“Breathe, Danny, breathe,” Kono says, as she helps him lay his back against a wall.

“Is he going to be fine?” Steve asks, laying the chosen suits on top of the medpod.

“Yeah, yeah,” she assures him without even turning to Steve.

Danny’s head clears as quick as it blurred. He opens his hands to see clotted blood covering his fingers and all over his (no longer) injured hand. Also, there’s a small flake of metal laying on his palm, shining under the flickering lights of sickbay. A small souvenir from the metal bar. He shudders.

“Are we there yet?” Danny mumbles, still high from his quick healing experience.

“Funny,” Kono utters, squinting her eyes at Danny, suddenly overflowing with concentration.

“What?” Danny asks, squinting his eyes back at her.

“Nothing,” she whispers, “just making sure you don’t get a horn on your forehead.”

It throws Danny off for a second, until Kono smiles and it clicks into place.

“Ha! You’re funny, too.” He mirrors her again, smiling back, pleased by her worry.

“ _You two finished yet_?” Steve interrupts, giving Danny a half-smile as they look at each other.

But contrary to the almost-smile, Danny feels a small prick, like the jab of a needle, as Steve’s words wash over him. It tastes like distress.

Danny blinks owlishly at Steve. Mentally rubbing both his arms soothingly.

“I’m fine, babe,” Danny says, loud enough for only Steve’s ears to hear, “seriously.”

“Okay,” Steve says on the exhale, not aware he had been holding his breath.

There’s a lull in the conversation, a short pause that hangs between them. And then the moment’s broken by Kono’s pointed rustle of the uniforms still in the cupboard, bringing out a rucksack from the very bottom of the thing, looking almost surprised to have actually found something.

Danny rolls his eyes, but as he does he catches Steve’s sheepish smile and can’t help break out into a goofy smile of his own.

Kono clicks her tongue and throws the rucksack at Steve, who in turn throws it on top of the medpod.

Danny lets the sliver of metal hit the floor and says, “Okay, now we just need to find the exit.”

They wheel all their stuff across the ship one more time, until the find a service hatch that’s somewhat level with the planet’s ground.

Steve pants, hands over his knees, and Danny does the same, leaning with his elbows over the table. Kono merely leans against the door to the pressure cabin and tucks her hair behind her ears, fixing a few superficial burrows here and there from the all the commotion of the past hours.

“How come you’re cool as a frozen vegetable?” Danny asks, immediately regretting using all that air in words, when he could have been using it to breathe and oxygenating his brain.

Kono smirks. “I’m a pro-athlete, this is child’s play for me.”

Steve scrunches up his face and blinks up at her a few times, letting that statement sink in. “Well, that made me feel old.”

Danny lifts one hand, still unable to spare oxygen to join in the conversation.

Steve points in between them, catching on what Danny wants to say. “Us. You make us feel old.”

Danny gives them a thumbs up.

“Okay,” Steve says, stretching his arms well above his head, “ten-minute break. Drink. Eat. Rest.”

Kono sniggers as she lets the backpack they had recovered earlier slide from her shoulders. She sits down cross-legged on the floor and starts tidying up their supplies.

“Pressure?” Steve asks, following the O2 line inside the suit as it pressurises in his hands, not fully, just enough for them to do the pre-walk tests.

“Check,” Kono says, as she pats the suit down, making sure it doesn’t have any leaks or tears.

“Umm… check,” Danny says, turning the suit around in his hands, looking at what Kono and Steve are doing and trying to copy it. “I guess,” he adds as an afterthought, already frustrated with his lack of surface-walk skills.

Steve lowers his own suit and gives him a chastising look. “You’re not supposed to guess, Danno.”

Time slows down for Danny and then freezes altogether. He drops the suit to the floor, his arms going limp beside him. “What did you just call me?”

Kono snaps up her head at Danny’s tone of voice, looking in between them, trying to figure out what set him off.

“What?” says Steve, looking confused, looking at Kono in case she knows something he doesn’t.

“You,” Danny points a finger at Steve, “called me _Danno_. Where did you get that from?”

“ _Danno?_ I…” Steve hesitates. “I don’t know.”

Danny looks like he’s about to explode into a supernova. Almost trembling with restrained anger.

Steve sends his sincerest thoughts at him, putting both hands up to calm him down. He doesn’t know why he said what he said, he’s not even sure how he picked that name, and he desperately wants Danny to know it too. Being the object of his anger has a bristly unpleasant feeling to it.

In return, Steve gets fleeting images of a brunette girl and a blond boy looking up at him, holding hands with him, running to him. Warmth flooding his system in a way he didn’t know it was possible, his commitment to these children, absolute and raw. They’re outside, near a beach or near water, but the sun gets in his eyes and he needs to blink, to look away.

“Oh,” Kono says, blinking rapidly and looking for support against the door, “those are your children. The ones you mentioned.”

“And they call you Danno,” adds Steve, still trying to separate himself from the feelings attached to what he just saw.

Danny swallows convulsively around the lump in his throat. “Yeah,” he croaks, “they do.” His eyes go wet around the edges and he quickly blinks the moisture away, to try and compose himself.

Without thinking much of it, Steve steps up to Danny and tucks him under his chin, one hand supporting his head and the other rubbing circles on his lower back.

“I’m sorry, buddy.” Steve gushes, feeling Danny’s heartbreak as his own, “we’ll make it back, okay. I’ll do everything in my power to get us back.”

“I’m sorry too, Danny,” says Kono, edging closer to him, mentally offering a hug, “I don’t understand why we keep getting all of our thoughts and feelings mixed up.”

Danny takes a deep breath and turns to look at Kono, effectively breaking Steve’s embrace, though Steve loops his arm over Danny’s shoulders and keeps him close all the same.

Danny offers a half-hug to Kono, and as she scoots to his side, offering what little support she can, he exhales shakily, wrung out by the experience. Steve looks down to both Kono and Danny, feeling overprotective all the sudden.

“We need to get out of here,” Kono says, giving Danny one last squeeze before separating from their group hug to pick up her suit. She fiddles with a few buttons and the testing function starts again, right where she left of.

Steve takes her lead and takes both his and Danny’s suits, starting the testing function in both.

“Okay, people, from the top.” Steve motions for Danny to come closer. “Come here, hold this for me,” he hands him his suit, “I’ll show you what to do.”

Danny blinks rapidly at Steve and steps forwards. “Okay, I’m ready when you are.”

Once they are all done with the basics, they help each other into their respective suits, adjusting the elbows and boots, rotating the pieces until they click into place. It’s also an opportunity to check a second time for possible tears in the fabric as they go about it.

“Everything looks good on my end,” says Kono.

“I’m good here, too,” says Danny, looking down at himself and sparing a perfunctory glance down Steve’s body, making sure everything is where it’s supposed to be.

“Good, good. Check the helmets,” says Steve, a hundred percent focused on the task at hand, checking his visor, the way it moves, making sure the hinges are not going to give him trouble out there. “Check the visor. The solar layer protection. Make sure there’s no dents, no cracks, no depressions in the translucent plate.”

“I’m good,” Kono says, handling expertly her gear, already accustomed to safety checks from her surfing experience. 

“Good, remember to check the valves and the comm carriers.”

Steve leaves his helmet aside. “Danny? Give me your helmet.” Without a word, Danny passes his helmet to Steve and observes him at work, the way his hands move, quick and efficient.

“I’m good,” Kono lets them know.

“Okay, I’m almost done here. Can you check the backpack again? We need all the H-bags we recovered, all the protein bars, and the emergency blankets. The rest we must leave behind.”

“Are you sure you’re going to be able to carry all of that, babe?” Danny asks, eyeing the monster backpack on the ground, as Kono counts H-bags and snacks.

“They’re more than snacks, you know?” She comments offhandedly.

“Yeah, yeah,” Danny answers, completely forgoing the part where he didn’t say the thing about the snacks aloud. “I know; H-bags will keep us standing, nutrition bars will keep us strong enough to fight back. I did survival camp too.”

“Really? How long ago?” Kono asks, bobbing her head as she recounts the stuff for a fifth time.

“Too long ago,” he answers, mostly to himself. He runs his fingers through his hair, gently tugging at the back of his head.

“Would you relax?” Steve says, offering his helmet back.

“Mmm,” Danny mumbles, refraining from saying any more than he should; he has seen entire operations collapse in far more controlled environments, and he’s sure Steve has seen the same often enough, and in even more complex contexts than this.

Steve side-eyes him and does a harrumphing sound in his head. Danny flips him off in return, just in time for Kono to see him doing it.

“Okay, boys,” she reprimands, “I think we are as ready as we are going to be.”

Steve stands straighter, nodding once in agreement. He takes a few items from the cart, passing them to Danny and Kono. A pocketknife to Kono, who stashes it in the front pocket of her suit. A small first-aid kit to Danny, who Steve himself latches onto the allotted space for it at Danny’s hip. And a small _laser-lite_ for himself, which he latches, safety on, at his hip.

Kono grabs an H-bag and hooks it up to the allotted space at Steve’s back, making sure it’s well protected from the sun’s rays, tapping his shoulder when she’s done. Steve gives an experimental slurp at the straw protruding from the neck of the suit and nods to Kono. She does the same for Danny. And then Steve helps her with her own H-bag.

Finally, they put on the helmets, and then the gloves, engaging the safety latches with soft clicks.   

“Comm check,” says Steve, his voice coming slightly distorted over the earphones.

“Check.” Danny and Kono say in unison.

Steve holds two thumbs up, and says, “second pressure test.”

They all tap their forearm panels. The suits puffing up and holding, which means no pressure leaks, completely isolated from the elements. A beep-beep emerges from the suits and the under lights of the panels turn yellow.

They walk into the pressure cabin, and close the door. The light goes from red to green in a matter of seconds.

“We good with the plan?” Steve questions, hand already poised at the latch to the door to the outside.

“Walk five clicks, get into the warehouse, look for a way to contact home. Got it,” answers Kono, head a hundred percent in the game. 

Danny takes a deep breath and his forearm panel blinks from yellow to orange, and then back to yellow, signalling a sudden change in atmosphere levels and the reestablishment of homoeostasis. 

Steve notes the change in Danny’s panel and grabs him by the shoulder, circling him until he’s looking at Danny square in the eye.

“Danny, relax, it’s pretty much like walking anywhere else, the scrubbers and filters are working perfectly, these are good suits, okay? Latest model. I swear, you’re going to be fine.”

Danny nods, and with that, Steve unlatches the last manual safeties and pulls the door open.


	9. Chapter 9

When Danny was about fourteen he had been a member (albeit briefly) of the Scouts Association, a membership that abruptly ended on a week-long trip to a sim-site for life in an orbiting space station: _“Live for a week the way they did, before we soared the skies”_.

He had quickly (and embarrassingly) found out how much he hated the idea of being: a) stuck inside a tin can for an undetermined period, b) one sheet of aluminium away from death, and c) anywhere where his feet weren’t connected to the ground.

His brain didn’t care one ounce that it had been a simulation, nor that he was one door away from being “back” in terra firma.

The scenery on planet 186F is bleak. Mostly arid soil and a few bushes here and there. It doesn’t help that the sun is low on the horizon either, like dusk, making even the tiniest of pebbles cast long shadows under their feet. And of course, there’s only a 6-millimetre-thick glass between his face and the depleted atmosphere. It’s like the orbit station sim-site all over again, except this time he can’t go through a door and feel the relief wash over him. As far as he can tell, there’s a gentle breeze that kicks up some dust every now and then, but he can’t hear a thing beyond his own thoughts and breathing inside the suit. He urges his attention back to the outside, to the path ahead.

They have been walking for almost an hour. Even if the terrain seemed straightforward from their who-knows-how-old maps in the ship, the actual experience is nothing but simple and going a lot slower. The ground is fraught with loose pebbles and dried up plants, which makes slipping and falling all too possible, something they need to avoid at all costs, so they don’t break their helmets and die.

Danny takes a deep breath and looks up ahead at the peak of a small hill, where the warehouse they are after is. Shimmery under the Keplerian Sun. He clears his throat, wrangling his thoughts back from death from exposure to the elements and suffocation. They do comm checks every twenty minutes or so, to preserve energy, both theirs and their suits, but it’s too isolated in here, it’s lonely; it gives him too much space to think, to imagine.

“Somebody please say something, it’s too quiet here,” Danny says, trying to get away from his morbid thoughts. An image of blue-tinged lips crosses his mind, the lips are his own and he’s looking down on himself as he gasps for the next breath. The thought grows until it spills over the boundaries of his mind, into the minds of the others.

His earpiece crackles to life, pulling him abruptly away from his vision.

“We’re close, Danny, relax,” Kono says over the channel, her voice echoing inside Danny’s head, but without the commanding component that made them melt to the ground before. Perhaps it only works if she wishes it strongly enough.

Danny’s breath hitches, like it’s rebelling at Kono’s suggestion. There’s a beep from the breathing system, signalling a change in oxygenation patterns, and there’s a tell-tale change in the colouring of his forearm control panel. Beside him, Steve stops abruptly, sighs and grabs Danny by the shoulder, turning him to give him a soul-searching look. Danny struggles to bury his death visions behind other, less gloomy, thoughts.

Steve’s so close Danny can see his worried frown even through the tinted glass of the helmet.

“Danno, stop living in here,” Steve taps Danny’s helmet, approximately where his forehead would be, “and start living in here,” he motions to the expanse of the dryland in front of them. It reminds Danny of his father’s words about the importance of the here and now.  

Danny shakes his head and agrees ruefully, “I know, I know.” Ashamed of all the awful places his mind tends to wander when unattended. It’s like he needs a babysitter for his catastrophic thoughts.

Kono’s voice cuts through his musings. “Hey, Steve, why don’t we keep the comm channel open, so we can talk as we walk?” She suggests, stressing her words in all the important places, throwing condensed hints at Steve’s head.

Steve’s first reaction is to deny the request, but he takes one look at Danny, shoulders slumped and thoughts already circling around the subject of death again, and capitulates.

“Yeah, good idea, let’s do that.”

Steve checks his forearm panel, making sure everything is in order and throws a furtive glance at Danny and Kono’s as well. Once he’s sure that everything is in order and that Danny is somewhat contained, he starts walking again, nudging Danny gently and winking at him, though he’ll hardly see it from inside the helmet.

“C’mon, Danno, we have to keep moving.”

Kono chuckles, already sensing what’s coming.

“Don’t call me Danno,” Danny grumbles over the comm.

“Aww, c’mon man, you know you love it,” Steve teases, mentally settling back to enjoy the last of their walk with the background soundtrack of Danny’s ramblings.

“No, I don’t,” Danny denies quickly. “But I did appreciate the wink, babe,” he adds, smiling with his mind at Steve.

“Yeah, well, it’s good for morale,” Steve says, trying to downplay his actions.

“Mmm,” Danny hums. “Sure, it is, man. Whatever you need to tell yourself.”

Steve chuckles at Danny’s cynicism. “Okay, then, it’s good for you.”

“You see, it wasn’t so hard to admit you want me happy and pleased.” Danny shoots back.

“If this is you happy, I would hate to see you displeased,” Steve deadpans.

Kono laughs and once it subsides, takes a long pull from her hydration valve. They are still a good kilometre away from the base, and hopefully their way out of this mess.

The warehouse is surprisingly easy to break into. On account of not having being locked at all. In fact, it doesn’t even _have_ a lock.

Danny waves at Steve to help him push the door open and Steve leans his weight into the metal door. Kono, on her part, hovers close behind them. They can almost taste her eagerness to do something helpful. Danny puts more weight and effort into it, until finally, the door yields with a loud clank.

“I suppose it doesn’t make sense to lock the door after you,” Danny comments, suppressing the impulse to dust himself off, “when the atmosphere is mostly unbreathable and there’s a healthy seal of dust keeping the door closed. I mean, who’s going to sneak in and squat in here anyway, right?” He crosses his arms over his chest, trying to keep it together, and certainly not thinking about having less than a centimetre in between him and suffocation.

Kono pats him on the shoulder and ushers him inside the warehouse, squeezing his upper arm gently before letting him go. Right, he needs to keep it together for all their sakes.

There are six crafts covered in tarps across the warehouse. A desk nearby and a bulky computer station embedded into the wall, to the right of the entrance. Half the left wall is covered in tools and spare parts (presumably) for the ships. The far wall is a different story, it’s translucent and modular, with a set of chains and pulleys that connect to another set of pulleys on the ceiling.

“Oh,” Danny says, realising on further inspection, that the translucent wall is in fact the front gate and it’s made of solar panels, the old kind, though probably self-cleaning, because light still shines through.

“Archaic,” Kono pipes up, her voice crackling over the comm channel. She’s looking up at the weights and pulleys as well.

“You think they had O2 enrichment systems here?” asks Danny, turning to look at Steve, curious as to what he might say, having a military background and all. But Steve is already elsewhere, exploring his surroundings, trying to tug the tarp off one of the vessels by himself.

Danny shakes his head and approaches Steve, silently helping him pull the tarp down. Turns out it’s not a ship, well, not the kind they were hoping for. Judging by the structure it might not even hover over the ground.

The main structure of the vehicle is propped up in crates that lift it evenly, supporting it by the middle and staying clear of the front and back. There’s also the tip of a metal bar protruding on each side, at least Danny thinks he’s looking at it from the front.

‘ _Interesting_ ,’ he thinks.

Going around the vehicle proves it’s got four metal tips in total, which jostles a memory from an old book his father showed him once. There should be wheels in this vehicle, proper rubber wheels, like the kind they used in Old-Earth, when oil was still all the rage and a commodity people murdered for.

He kneels to look at the underside of the carriage, confirming two axles cross from side to side, one forward and the other near the tail. He also thinks it has a few parts missing, there are two clear gaps near the front, with markings that signal a tubing must have gone around the pieces that are missing. He opens his eyes wide, taking in the piece of history in front of him; he wants to remember every detail of the thing, so he can tell his children later—they’re not going to believe how close he was to an Old-Earth artefact, and touched it. This thing belongs to a museum.

By the time he comes up, he has already lost Steve’s interest, who’s moved on to spying under the tarp of a vehicle one row over, signalling for Kono to come help him.

As Steve and Kono wrangle the tarps down, Danny wanders to the computer station and from there he observes their efforts. The vehicle they uncover is taller, and the tarps are tied down to each other, but as soon as they work the knots (which is not made easy by the lack of flexibility on their gloves), the covers fall away and a jumper emerges from within. It’s painted in deep blue and has a shimmery glistening to it.

Kono whistles in awe, admiring the sheer bulk of the vessel in front of her. It’s a sleeker, newer version of the jumper they had seen through ITA’s system. The main rotor blades have a modular structure that seem to pull in and disappear completely into the upper housing of the frame. And the vents on the side hint at an engine capable of breaking free of middle-sized planets’ gravity pull. This type of jumper could get them and twenty other people to the nearest outpost. They were not built for luxury, nor extended trips, having absolutely no facilities or running water, but it will do.

Danny hoots internally, his spark of hope reverberating with the same giddy realisation of the other two.

“We need to check that the vehicle is intact and working,” Steve says over the comms, “mind if we cut you out for a bit, Danny?”

Danny smirks to himself. When he first met Steve, a little more than 12 hours ago, he didn’t look like the type to ask first and do later. And look at him now.

“No, go ahead, I’m going to check out the system from here, see what we have to work with.”

“Okay, Danny, anything of note just holler.”

“Will do,” Danny answers, pressing a button on the wall next to the system, hoping it’s the right one to boot up the computer.

Amazingly, the computer splutters to life. Danny figures the entire warehouse is powered up by the solar panels, and even if the system is ancient and the panels have more dust than optimal, some energy must still get through, enough to keep the bare minimum maintenance running.

The interface is simple and easy to figure out. Working with a physical keyboard that has plastic keys stuck together? Not so much. But he manages to pull up the main frame on a “guest” account. Unfortunately, the system is behind on a couple of decades’ worth of updates.

Danny leans on the wall to the side of the computer and gets ready to hit “ignore” a few dozen times.

His earpiece crackles. “How you doing, Danny?”

Danny looks over his shoulder back to the jumper. They’ve cleared the tarps from the floor and Steve’s head is peaking from one of the cabin doors.

“I’m okay, waiting for this thing to finish updating.”

“Oh, okay,” Steve says, in a way that leaves something tingling inside Danny’s chest.

“What’s wrong?” Danny asks, but Steve hesitates to answer, ducking back into the cabin of the jumper.

“Hey, Danny,” Kono says, “can you check the date on the system. This one seems to be on the fritz.”

“Uhm, sure,” Danny answers, turning his attention fully to the computer, thankfully it has already applied the non-optional updates, so pulling up a date is easy.

“What the fuck?” He whispers into the line.

“You too, brah?” Kono comments, her voice making Danny’s insides tingle as well.

“It says here…” Danny starts, hesitant. “I mean, no matter how old these things are, they can still get updates, so, the stardate should be in synch, right?” His tone goes higher, he notes from a distant corner of his mind. “This is not a maintenance issue, is it?” Suddenly he needs more air than his equipment is fit to provide.

“What date do you have, Danny?” Steve asks, this time his voice is unwavering and commanding. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for further questions.

“Fe-Federation year three-thousand twenty-eight,” he stutters, “point-four.”

The line goes silent for a second too long, and then Steve comes back again, delivering the bad news, “same here, buddy.”

“What?! It can’t be true, though, can it?” Silence. “Guys?” Danny turns around and starts towards the jumper.

“Danny, wait.” Kono stops him before he even gets to the Old-Earth artefact he was fussing over not ten minutes ago. “See if you can activate the long-distance scanners, Steve says he’s doing the same here.”

“Long-distance scanners,” Danny repeats, low-key freaking out. There’s a two-month difference in between their crash and the stardate in this place. Two months! How is that possible?!

“Danny, did you get it?” Kono asks, her voice wobbly in the end.

He taps more purposefully into the keyboard, until the appropriate window shows up. He activates the scanner and points it in all directions, not sure what they’re looking for.

“What are we—

“Time anomaly,” Steve cuts in. His voice has gone sharp and commanding.

“Time anomaly,” Danny echoes, as a shiver runs down his spine, and presses ‘enter’.

It takes less than a second for the results to show up.

“STEVE!!” Danny shrieks, pulling away from the computer and rushing to the jumper, at the same time Kono and Steve rush from the jumper to him.

Steve bypasses him completely and runs to the door they used to come in. Danny and Kono turn to follow closely behind.

Steve opens the door, steps outside and holds up an antenna in the direction of the wreckage. With the other hand, he holds up a small screen, another archaic piece of hardware found aboard the jumper.

The screen lights up in the middle and a warning flashes in red and orange at the very top.

“How long do we have?” Kono asks, wringing her hands together. “Before it explodes?”

Steve shakes his head, struggling to balance the bulky screen on the same hand as the antenna and tapping on it with the other hand, hoping to pull a better image of the wreckage.

Danny steps forwards and wrenches the antenna from Steve’s hand, holding it up high. Steve doesn’t even falter, tapping twice as fast into the screen.

“Umm, according to the data we’re getting, the explosion is contained within the pocket of the time anomaly.”

Danny’s jaw hits the floor, metaphorically speaking.

“Are we far enough?” Kono asks, crowding into Steve’s space, trying to make sense of the information on the screen.

Steve presses his lips; his apprehension seeps out in a compact wave that presses on Danny and Kono’s chests. Danny doesn’t need to hear it to know the answer to Kono’s question, judging by the sudden coldness of Steve’s urgency, one that quickly morphs into distress.

Kono gasps beside them.

“We have time,” Steve says, trying to sound convincing, but his inner chatter spills over his words and a myriad of uncertainties flash across Danny and Kono’s minds.

“We have _some_ time,” Steve amends.

“How is it even possible?” Danny asks, trying to wrap his head around two months of his life gone in the blink of an eye.

“The warp drive must have got stuck, it’s compressing the time-continuum over and over in front of it.” Steve adjusts his hold on the screen, showing Danny and Kono the way the time-continuum ripples around them, the waves getting tighter and tighter, until they turn fuzzier and then impenetrable as they get closer to the ship. “But it’s not going anywhere, it’s not dilating on the other side, it’s just condensing and overheating.” Steve taps furiously into the screen, but no new data shows up. “It has already started exploding maybe, but it’s going to take some time for the condensed bubble to unravel completely, for the ripples to rush back to their original place.”

Danny has an urgent need to kneel on the floor and retch. Kono feels equally unbalanced to his side. Silently they seek each other’s hands.

“Have you seen this before?” Danny asks, struggling to keep himself in the moment, to avoid the fog that wants to take over his brain. “I mean, what do warp drives do? Explode? Implode? Take a chunk out of the sky?”

“I…” Steve’s at a loss for words. “No. Theoretically, I know what happens, it has happened in the field, but people don’t often survive to tell you about it.”

“Ah, shit,” Danny swears, his eyes prickling, but he can’t cry with a helmet on. He takes a deep breath instead. And then another, and another, his lungs burning with each gasp.

“Danny, Danny, you’re going to hyperventilate that way,” Kono rubs his back. He’s unaware of how he got to the ground, but the good-vibes Kono’s thinking his way help to regain control of his breathing patterns and keep the fog at bay.

“Please tell me we can get out of this, we can get ahead of the unravelling?” Kono says.

“Yeah,” Steve says, finally looking away from the screen and disconnecting it from the antenna that now lays on the ground next to Danny. “I think we can, c’mon, we need to start the jumper and get away from here. There’s a lot of work to do.”


	10. Chapter 10

“Steve, I’m putting our supplies inside the jumper, should I just throw them in?” Kono asks, in a rush to get inside the ship, waiting for further instructions on the comms.

“Secure it under a seat or inside the footlocker behind the backseat,” Steve answers, trying to split his attention between what’s he’s saying and what he’s doing; checking the pulley system on the ceiling. He figures the pulleys are meant to pick up the vehicles and deposit them out, but he can’t understand how.

Kono gets inside the jumper and scans the interior of the ship. It’s big, but not spacious in a modern-vessel kind of way. There’s two seats in the front: pilot and co-pilot. Two back seats behind them, one big enough for two people, one that could fold away, large enough for just the one person. And behind that, there’s enough space to fit at least twenty more people, or cargo. There’s enough handles, and nets to squeeze about half a ton of equipment in there. Looking up to the ceiling reveals some of the cargo space has been sacrificed to build the housing for the rotor blades. A clever enough design, considering it sustained an entire colony for decades before the Federation saw fit to sacrifice it all I the name of purity. Or human survival, as they like to call it.

She pushes herself out of her reverie and out of the jumper. “Our meagre provisions are secured, boss,” Kono announces, climbing out, looking for something else to do.

“He’s not your boss!” Danny bristles, leaning on the metal work table next to Steve. He looks back into the direction of the jumper and then to Steve. “Tell her you’re not her boss, Steven. She’s young and impressionable, she doesn’t need your bad influence in her life.” He waggles his finger in Steve’s face.

Steve bats Danny’s finger away, going back to figuring out a system—that hasn’t been used or replicated in decades—by only looking at it.

“How would you even know I’m a bad influence, you’ve known me for what? Fourteen hours?” He says, resorting to looking around the place for a machine or cart or something to pull the jumper out.

“Oh!” Danny exclaims, losing his teasing smile as he picks up on Steve’s musings. “I’m stupid. That’s what the other vehicle was for,” he says mostly to himself, “it’s like a tractor or something.” He moves away from the table, going to the Old-Earth tractor-thing, to inspect it further.

In the meantime, Kono steps next to Steve, following Danny with her gaze.

“Mmm,” Kono hums, biting her lip, “why not just get out of here flying?” She points to the ceiling and Steve follows the direction of her finger, shaking his head. “Well, I mean, the jumper must be armed with something, right? At least to make its way through a meteor shower.”

“Huh.” Steve’s floored, why didn’t he think of that sooner?

“Okay, so,” Danny calls from the other side of the warehouse, pulling a series of levers, which activates the series of chains and pulleys over the main gate and the rest of the ceiling, “maybe you’re a bad influence on each other, but thankfully,” he points to himself, “you have me as the voice of reason.”

The solar panel gate pulls up and then starts folding in on itself, keeping level with the ceiling. Incredibly, the ceiling starts folding too, moving on railings to the outside of the left wall, opening a big enough pathway for the Jumper to go through.

“Whoa! Go Danny!” Kono hoots, one fist in the air. “My plan was a lot cruder than this.”

“It’s okay, babe, Steve didn’t even think of it. But we shouldn’t be hard on him, he wasn’t interested in the fact that they stopped repairing their tractor a long time ago, so they must have invented something better to let the vehicles out.”

“That’s enough.” Steve cuts them off, though without any fire behind it. “Clear a path for us to hover out of here, I’ll go do the pre-flight checks.”

After about fifteen minutes or frantic cleaning, they’re almost ready for take-off, if only Danny would hurry up and get inside the ship already.

“Danny! Get in here!” Steve yells at the top of his lungs, the comm channel overloading and hissing into Danny’s ears.

“I’m coming, you, bossy little shit!” He whispers under his breath, but loud enough that the other two can hear him.

“Boys,” Kono cuts in, leaning from the back seat and putting a hand on Steve’s shoulder, “take it down a notch, we’re all nervous.”

Danny runs back to the ship and jumps in, closing the cabin door behind him.

“There was a piece of metal on the ground, alright?” He explains himself, sitting beside Steve and fastening his seatbelt. “This craft works with rotor blades until we clear out from the ground, I didn’t want to risk this piece of metal,” he waves it in front of Steve’s eyes, “killing us in our way up.”

Kono exhales a shuddering breath upon seeing the shiny fragment in Danny’s hand.

Steve clenches his jaw, hard enough the others can feel it. “Debris rarely lifts from the ground, Danny, you shouldn’t have worried about it.”

“Well, I don’t know how this works, Steven! I’ve only seen it in old manuals and museums, alright?! Plus, “ _rarely?”_ ” He does quotation marks with his hands. “We only need one rarely seen phenomenon in our lives, okay? And that’s the warp drive holding long enough for us to live. Okay?! Okay.” He sits back and stuffs the metal shard in the tray under his seat. “I didn’t want to tempt faith,” he grumbles at last, finally winding down. However, even as he says it, he knows he shouldn’t have.

“We can make a believer out of you yet, brah,” Kono sing songs, her words tingling in his neck with enthusiasm and familiarity.

Danny groans. Kono laughs. Steve smirks and starts take-off checks, working the anti-torque pedals under his feet, and flipping half a dozen switches.

“Ready or not, here we go,” Steve grits through clenched teeth and starts the engine. The floor vibrates beneath their feet and Danny lets out a keening sound, closing his eyes.

As the rotor blades gain momentum, Steve places his left hand on the collective lever, and his right on the cyclic. He pulls on the collective, giving the throttle a gentle twist, making the jumper lift off the ground, going slowly towards the ceiling, and then he pushes on the cyclic, making the jumper go forward.

Danny whines, squeezing his eyes, hard enough to be painful and stretching a gloved hand to grab into Steve’s suit front.

The jumper elevates further into the sky and away from the warehouse and then tilts forwards. The rattle subsides and Danny lets his breath go, relaxing and sprawling back into the seat.

Steve reluctantly dislodges Danny’s hand from the front of his suit, sending an apologetic smile on his way. Danny nods minutely, understanding it’s easier to pilot a ship when you don’t have someone panicking beside you.

They pick up speed, and Steve does a fly over the rest of the base.

Kono looks down on the scenery through the round thick window at her side. There’s about ten buildings below, and some vestiges of roads, though mostly covered by dirt. She gives herself a moment to regret not being able to explore beyond the warehouse, to take in the way they used to live before the ban on direct fraternisation was enforced.

She’s abruptly brought back to the present by Steve’s explanation of what’s to come.  

“We need to pressurise the cabin as we ascend, we’ll go in spirals from here, and then comes the really hard part,” Steve answers.

Kono looks down on the base one more time, determined to remember it all for posterity. Their stop in 186F, albeit brief, deserves to be remembered if only for the importance of the place itself.

There’s a whoosh sound that envelops them for a second or three and Steve announces the cabin has been pressurised.

“Kono, you’re in charge of monitoring the wreckage, give me updates every five minutes,” Steve goes into commanding mode.

“Yes, sir.” Kono mock salutes and takes out the bulky screen from before, now hooked up wirelessly to the jumper’s antenna. She watches the ripples frequency intently as they keep spiralling up into the sky.

“Danny, I need you to keep an eye on the gauges.” Steve frees up a hand and taps on the console in front of them. “I need you to tell me when this one right here changes to green, okay? The second it changes to green, Danny, I need to know.”

Danny nods, not even blinking away from the gauge.

“Good, get ready for the first jump.”

“Oh, lord, this is the one they call the dirty jump, don’t they?” Danny asks, holding onto the shoulder straps of his seatbelt.

Kono looks away from the screen at that. “Why do they call it the dirty jump?” She asks and then focuses back on the screen.

“Give it a minute,” Steve answers and Danny groans.

Soon enough, the engine starts making a hollow sound and then suddenly jerks to a stop and with it, the jumper hovers still for about two seconds. Those few seconds are filled with the sound of metal sliding against metal, of fast retracting rotor blades into the top housing. And then, there’s a roar from beneath, accompanied by a different sort of rattling, like being shaken by a giant.

“SON OF A BITCH!” Kono yells, hugging the screen to her chest, trying to hang on to her seatbelt.

Steve chuckles and gives Danny a smug smile, which he doesn’t return, he’s too busy keeping an eye on the gauges and trying to ignore Steve.

Steve, still smiling, lets go of the cyclic and collective and unfastens his helmet, silently passing it to Kono who secures it behind her on a rack. He then unfastens his gloves and passes them back as well, taking a deep breath and inviting the others to do the same.

As Danny and Kono relieve themselves of their gear, Steve comments on the so called dirty jump. “They only had this system so the jumpers could get a clean start without compromising the structures below. It was during the time of skyscrapers everywhere and very few spots clear enough to take off.” Steve nods, impressed, retaking the command of the vessel, “it’s crude, it’s clever, it’s terrifying. What’s not to love?”

Danny shakes his head, unbelieving. “Of course, you _Neanderthal animal_ , of course, you love something that’s terrifying. You’re touched in the head you know?”

“Aww, thanks, Danno, I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“It isn’t. It really, really— _Green!_ Steve, Green!” Danny points to the gauges.

“Get ready for the real jump, people!” Steve exclaims, exuberant smile dangling from his lips, flipping a big read switch and working a semi-circular lever down very slowly.

“Is that for a warp drive?” Danny asks.

“Yeah, similar, first versions of it anyway,” Steve answers.

“Hey, boss,” Kono says, sounding a bit unsure of herself.

“Yeah?”

“Something is happening down at the wreckage,” Kono risks a brief look down her window, noting how far up they are, already well over the clouds.

“Define something,” Danny asks.

“Yeah, it’s like everything is still, but the ripples at the ship, they look more defined, we might be losing the signal.”

“Don’t worry about it, Kono, we’re making a jump in: three, two, one. Jumping,” Steve counts and pulls the warp lever all the way down.

“WAIT!” Kono shrieks, and time freezes.

Danny only has time to gaze outside the round window on his side and note how the planet seems to stretch like taffy beneath them. A fraction of a moment later, whatever is happening downside, catches up to the jumper, stretching them as well. It’s not painful, but it is dizzying. Like going on a merry-go-round against his will.

There’s a flare of light behind Danny and Steve and they both react to it in tandem. As they turn to see what happened, time is first quick and then slows down to a crawl. Kono is set ablaze on the backseat, the screen charring on her hands, but she’s in her human form at the same time. Like two superimposed images that are warring between each other to dominate reality.

And then, time snaps back to normal. Kepler 186F is nowhere in sight and the jumper quickly decelerates, the emergency brakes activating violently against their gained momentum on the climb out of 186F’s orbit.

The storage footlocker opens and a couple dozens of H-bags fly out, fanning out in a forward direction. Kono’s seatbelt unfastens suddenly, her body propelling forward as well. She’s back to human form, her hair singed in places.  

Steve lurches behind her, straining against his own seatbelt, barely grazing her leg as she passes in front of him. That soft push changes her course from colliding directly into the front of the console, to the edge of it. Head first. Even without seeing her eyes roll to the back of her head, Steve can tell Kono loses consciousness.

“Kono, no!” Danny yells, too late to do anything about it.

The lights flicker and turn off, the emergency lights kicking in immediately after. A shiver runs through Danny’s body, the memory of waking up in the middle of the Hoku’ae’a falling off the sky too fresh in his mind.

The secondary emergency brakes activate, finally decelerating the ship completely and leaving them effectively adrift in space.

Danny shifts again, careful not to drift away; a small worry, but he would rather concentrate on that than the big picture.

Regrettably, just the tangential thought of what’s to come leads to concerning thoughts. “How much oxygen do we have left?”

Steve turns from watching over Kono to give Danny a fond look.

“Danny, buddy, we have enough oxygen for a lifetime, I swear. You need to calm down, okay?”

“Yeah?” Danny shifts again, grabbing on the railing at his back to keep himself relatively in the same spot. “How long is a lifetime in here? Hmm? In your expert opinion.”

Steve shakes his head, trying to hold it together for Danny’s sake. He’s out of comforting words. He can’t keep pretending they’re going to survive this.

He hangs his head between his shoulders and seeks Danny’s hand with his own, giving it a gentle squeeze when he does.

“Let’s talk about something else, okay?” Steve proposes, trying to change the subject all together, to put the focus somewhere else.

Danny swallows thickly and nods, squeezing Steve’s hand back. He’s about to scoot over and lean on Steve’s shoulder, when Kono stirs beside them, blinking owlishly at the ceiling.

“Heeey, beautiful.” Danny greets her, pushing off the wall slightly to float to her. “You back with us?”

“What—” She coughs. “What happened?”

“The engine gave out. Shook us pretty rough.” Danny smiles grimly at her. “Your seatbelt failed and you hit your head,” He fills her in, as Steve fiddles with the panel on her suit, checking on her vitals most likely.

“Your pulse is a little elevated,” Steve informs them, back into military mode. “But still within expected ranges considering the circumstances.”

“Oh.” Kono scrubs her face, trying to get her bearings. Steve retreats to the console. “I was dreaming about Chin.”

Danny frowns. “Your chin?”

“No.” Kono scrunches up her face, mildly amused. “My cousin; his name is Chin. Chin-Ho.”

“Oh. Okay.” Danny says, realising that makes a lot more sense.

Steve passes Danny one the H-bags, for Kono.

Danny asks her, “You feel like drinking some water?”

Kono falters, thinking. “Is it water-water, or an H-bag? ‘Cause H-bags taste funny after a while.”

Danny chuckles. “Yeah, sorry kiddo, only H-bags. I don’t like all the sugar either.”

“Yeah.” She sighs ruefully.

Danny attaches the bag to her suit and tugs the drinking valve closer to her lips. She drinks a bit, enough to get rid of the scratchy feeling on her throat.

“What are we doing now?” She asks.

Steve and Danny look at each other.

“Waiting,” Steve answers laconically.

Kono’s face crumples. Reading in Steve’s features and his thoughts the severity of the situation.

“I’m sorry, babe.” Danny says, running his fingers through her hair. “There’s nothing else we can do now, so at this point? Yeah, we’re waiting— _hoping_ for a miracle.”

Kono takes a shuddering breath and closes her eyes, processing the terrible news.

“Hoping for a miracle?” Kono asks, after swallowing a couple of times. “Did you get a signal out?”

Danny and Steve look at each other and Steve takes the lead.

“We think we did, but we can’t be sure.”

“What about the engine?”

“Dead.”

“What? How?!”

“A ripple from the wrecked warp drive hit us as we activated our own. We jumped. We don’t really know where to exactly. We basically short-circuited in the time-space continuum, and it fried most of our systems.” Steve gives himself a pause, to push back an afterimage of Danny and him scrambling out of their seats, checking on Kono and trying to seal the ship as to maintain pressure and the O2 enrichment system. “It knocked communications, hydraulics, the engines and the vents. So, we’re losing heat. We managed a work around with recycled air, but it won’t last forever.”

Kono needs to remind herself to take a deep breath and keep calm, mindful of her injuries. She looks into Danny’s eyes, searching for hope in there, but all she finds is grief.

“But what—what if… we could… what about thrusters?” Kono asks and Steve shakes his head. “Shit, let’s blow up something then, a controlled explosion, we use that momentum to advance through space.”

Danny’s eyes well up and he huddles closer to her, for the first time understanding exactly how much younger Kono is.

“No!” She protests. “No. There must be something we can do. Anything! Let’s put on a freaking oxygen tank behind us and try it!”

Steve presses his lips together before answering in a careful tone. “Okay, suppose we get some speed going. What about planets? Gravity? Orbit pull? Meteors?”

Kono slumps her shoulders, biting her lip in concentration.

“But we could get closer to an outpost,” she offers, “within range of official communications. They could detect us in their radar.”

Danny wipes his eyes and clears his throat. “Kono, babe, we tried, okay?” He takes her hands in his, bringing them closer to his chest. “We tried everything we could think of. We have air. We have our supplies. And we have emergency lights.” He shrugs slightly. “We just need the miracle.”

Kono covers her face with one hand and lets out a heart-wrenching sob. Danny hugs her closer, tighter, but still careful of the big lump on her head, kissing lightly on her forehead. Kono lets it all out, with Steve and Danny as her witnesses, feeling for the first time the crushing anguish of defeat.

After a few minutes pass and her sobs begin to die down, she wipes her face with her hands, desperate for a piece of cloth or tissue to blow her nose. Steve produces a dusty rag out of somewhere and she gives him a wet smile. Danny, on his part, brushes her hair away from her face and puts his arm around her shoulders, tucking her into his side.

After she blows her nose and has a few slurps of the H-bag she feels better able to face the uncertainty the future holds.

“Okay.” She nods to no one. “Okay. So, what are we doing now? Passing the time?”

Danny nods back, giving her a faint encouraging smile.

“Okay,” she says again. “How do you feel about twenty questions?”

Steve chuckles fondly. “I used to play that with my sister.”

Kono smiles, nodding.

“Twenty questions then.” Steve chuckles again, revelling in Kono’s aplomb.

After playing every long-trip game they can think of. After they eat, rest for a while and get hydrated, all there’s left is getting to know each other better, interspersed with little questions and looks to make sure Kono’s head is holding up, that Danny’s panic is still at bay, and that Steve’s not feeding on the overwhelming tide of emotions of the other two.

Kono’s trying not to think of it as a way of witnessing each other’s last days, but every now and then, a surge of panic spikes and they look at each other, trying not to address the massive black hole sucking what little positive energy is left in the room.

“Favourite food,” Danny says, running out of menial questions to ask.

“Broccoli,” Steve answers, not even thinking about it.

Danny’s face almost breaks in disgust, out of words to rebut Steve’s awful life choices. The fact they’re already below freezing water temperatures doesn’t help either.

“Did you know,” Kono comments, rubbing her hands together, “that our Broccoli is nothing like the one in Old-Earth?”

“Well, of course.” Steve scrunches up his face, aborting the gesture to blow some warm air into his hands. “Mutations alone would account for—

“No.” Kono stops him before he launches into a full molecular biology explanation, they’ve been down this road before. “I mean, someone misplaced the original seeds and then found them, except, in reality, they found a different unidentified bag and labelled them as Broccoli.”

“On purpose?” Danny bristles at the notion, his thoughts trickling viscously inside his head, making hard to understand.

Kono shrugs her shoulders, not knowing what else to say.

“How do you know that?” Steve asks.

“I saw it on a documentary when I was in school, turns out they only uncovered the mistake like ten years ago, well, now fifteen.”

“You were in school fifteen years ago? How old are you?!” Danny frowns, looking Kono up and down, feeling much, much older than he did a second ago.

Steve laughs openly and wholeheartedly. “Oh, don’t even start, Danno,” he warns, tucking Danny under his arm, wanting to hold him with both hands and never letting go.

Danny frowns some more.

“What do _you_ like? Mmm?” Steve reroutes the conversation, hoping to avoid yet another tangential rant from Danny.

“Okay, don’t answer my questions, fine, I’ll pretend you two don’t have something going on here, ganging up on me.” Danny grumbles, as Kono bites the tip of her tongue. “Also, don’t call me Danno.” He harrumphs for good measure and then answers the question. “Pizza.”

“I knew you were going to say that.” Steve comments, leaning his head on top of Danny’s bulky shoulder. The position isn’t great for his neck, but he likes the incandescent presence of Danny to his side. 

“Yeah, sure you knew, babe.” Danny mock plays along, straining to turn and give him a goofy look. “What about yours, Kono?” He nods his chin at her.

Kono wavers her head from side to side, thinking. “Pineapple. I love them, they are so yellow and just the right level of sweet.”

“Oh, yeah, yellow.” Danny goes misty eyed. “I forgot about papayas.”

“Are you comparing pineapples to papayas?” Kono drawls, not very fond of the idea.

“They’re yellow, they’re sweet, both start with a _pee_.”

Kono squints at Danny, thinking annoying thoughts at him. He smiles in return.

“Do you want to change your selection?” Steve asks.

“No, no, pizza is fine.” Danny sighs and disentangles from Steve’s arm, his mind travelling light-years back to his home back in New New Jersey. His Ma doing pizza the traditional way, even if it was a process that could well take hours on a cold day, waiting for the dough to rise.

Sensing the onslaught of gloom coming off in waves from Danny, Steve hurries to the next topic, hoping to distract him further. “Okay, my turn. Song.”

“No,” Danny protests.

“What?” Kono pipes up, just noticing Danny’s sulkiness.

“I’m tired of this, we’re freezing to death and at this rate, we will never know why we got stuck in this mess.”

“Danny.” Steve tries to soothe first, but Danny dodges out of his way, so he resorts to light admonishment. “Give it a rest. Just let it be, man.”

“No.” Danny states calmly, like the warm breeze that brews before a storm. “My children are waiting for me, they have been waiting for months now, and I’m not home. You can’t possibly know what is like to lose a parent, Steven, especially at a young age. I need to be there for them.” He taps on his chest, emphasising how much he’s failing as a parent now. “I need them to know that I want to be there. That if I could lose another knee for them, I would.”

Tears well in his eyes, spilling down his cheeks. He tries not to get lost in his grief, for the sake of the others, taking solace in the thought that his children know he loves them. He’s made sure to tell them every day of their lives, at least twice a day, except for the months he’s been lost in space. He sniffles and blinks back tears.

“Actually,” Steve breaks the overwhelming silence that had fallen in between them. There’s piercing sorrow in Steve’s voice. “I lost both my parents when my mum died. My dad couldn’t deal with it, so eventually he sent me and my little sister to live with relatives at a central planet; Los Arcangeles. We barely talked from then on, I mean, what is there to talk about with the man who could have made your life bearable, but decided to make it miserable instead?” Steve’s voice breaks. “I was so focused on hanging on to Mary, my sister, that I couldn’t hang on to my dad as well. This would have been the first time in about a decade that I saw my dad. And the first time I went to Oahu in… well, almost twenty years.”

There’s a long pause in the conversation as Steve inadvertently floods them with the few precious memories he has of his old man. Showing him and his mum seashells he had found on a beach. Passing him tools to fix the sink. Listening to a crazy story his dad made up, tucked in between his parents and sister, laughing with abandon at the ridiculousness his father was trying to pass as the truth.

He had been eager to create new memories, to try and turn that page of their lives. After he got the call about his had being badly injured after a mugging gone wrong, he had realised for the first time his dad was not the same person that put him into an interplanet shuttle and didn’t look back once as he and Mary went away. His dad is older now, hopefully wiser, but most importantly, a lot frailer than he was at forty something and recently widowed.

Danny tucks closer to Steve and sighs, beating himself up for taking his frustrations out on Steve.

“Shit, man, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

Steve sighs back at him, offering a half smile in return.

“It’s okay, Danny. You didn’t know.”

Kono shifts next to Danny, grabbing the rail behind her and pushing slightly, to float over the other two and get Steve’s full attention.

She bites her lip before she speaks. “Did you know that your dad is part of the resistance?”

Her words are like a bucket of freezing water over Steve’s head. “What?!”

“Yeah, your dad.” Kono starts. “He helped me, when I was a kid and my powers where all out of whack and showing.” Fear and nostalgia bubbling up in her mind as she talks. “He helped me. He kept me hidden. Made complaints go away.”

She exchanges a look with Danny, sensing something from him that resonates with her emotions, but too fleeting to put down.

She continues, “he put me and my family in touch with people that didn’t hate me for just being born different.” She takes one of Steve’s hands, warming it with her own. “Your dad saved my life. Not just from the people, but from the rules that made my entire unfortunate existence, illegal, and subject to whatever the Federation wanted to take from me and my own.”

Steve eyes go round and wet, his bottom lip trembles. He swallows past the lump in his throat.

“My dad did that?” He croaks.

Kono nods solemnly, pushing her gratitude to John McGarrett and the Resistance into Steve’s orbit, to let him know how big this whole thing is.

Steve clenches his jaw and swallows thickly a couple of times hanging on to dear life to Danny and Kono, as each one of them grabs one of his hands.

Kono pushes herself to Steve’s other side and sits beside him, as Danny slides even closer to Steve and throws an arm over his shoulders. Emotional bookends.

Steve takes a shuddering breath and releases it slowly, still processing the news.

Danny clears his throat, wanting to say something but not knowing where to start.

Kono latches on his underlying emotions again, still resonating with a few of her own as she recalled her experiences growing up.

“Danny?” She says, hoping to imbue enough sympathy in her invitation to convince Danny to share with them.

Danny shakes his head, and Steve turns to look at him, finally sensing the undercurrent of nudges and dismissals coming and going between Kono and Danny.

“Danny?” Steve echoes Kono’s invitation.

Danny rolls his eyes and sighs. “My partner, she was killed under suspicious circumstances back in Jersey. She was a sympathiser, and loud about it.” He throws a pained look Kono’s way. “About half a year before her death, a rumour broke out in the station, that she had non-human ties.” He bites his upper lip, pouting in the process. “I mean, the report is clear about her cause of death, but nobody had to say it out loud either, it was obvious she was murdered because of her beliefs. As the commotion passed, eyes began to turn to her partner; me.

“So, my ex and I found it in our hearts to put all of our stuff behind us and decided to move to the Oahu System to protect our kids. She came first, moved in with her boyfriend, who she convinced to invest in a land developing project in Oahu specifically to create a motive to move away. And I followed, kicking and screaming, to put as much distance between her and me, at least to the public eye.”

Steve hums under his breath, a grim look on his face.

“I’m sorry, Danno, I’m sorry this is happening to all of us. Maybe we were all meant to die here after all.”

Danny hangs his head between his shoulders and swallows back hot tears.

There’s a sound nagging at the back of Danny’s mind. He hates the sound. He’s tired and cold to the core of his soul, his body is shaking at irregular intervals, and the blaring sound is making the whole experience way worse than it needs to be.

Danny reaches over Steve’s sleeping form —he chooses to think of him as sleeping, even if unconscious is more like it— and turns the alarms off. What’s the point of having five different sirens screaming at you to prevent your death when they have no means to survive anymore?

It’s hard to concentrate on what he’s doing, fading in an out as he drags his fingers from one button to the next, until he runs out of alerts to dismiss. He shakes his head, trying to focus on what he’s doing wrong. He blinks hard to make the screen stop dancing in front of his eyes when he sees an ‘ _incoming call_ ’ message right in the centre.

He taps on it to let it through.

“Jumper victor-victor eighty-six. This is emergency shuttle from Oahu calling. Pick up.”

Danny listens to the voice intently, thinking it resembles faintly the accent of the Hawaiian System.

After a pause, the voice starts again. “Jumper victor-victor eighty-six. This is rescue shuttle from Oahu calling. We’re responding to an SOS beacon from your ship.”

Danny taps on the microphone and curses. A ‘ _no connection_ ’ warning pops up. They no longer have communications available. He can listen to inbound calls, but not answer them.

“Jumper victor-victor eighty-six. This is the rescue ship _Honu_ , we’re responding to a distress call from your position, please respond.” A pause. And then the voice comes back, more urgent than before. “I’m Chin-Ho Kelly from Oahu in the Hawaiian System, acting as rescue operator. Is anybody there?” Another pause. “Kono? Are you there?”

A shock of adrenaline jolts Danny to action. He recognises the name, it’s Chin, from Kono’s dream. They’ve been found.

Using what little strength he has left, and ignoring the protests of his stiff body, he pushes off the console, aiming at Kono, who’s stretched along the back seat, floating with her back turned to Danny.

He can barely control his path, smashing against her with little finesse. However, the push wakes her up enough to be alert and listening at what Danny has to say.

“Kono,” he rasps out. After clearing his throat, he continues, “Kono, Chin Ho Kelly. Outside.”

Kono is disoriented, but she reacts to her cousin’s name. “Chin? Chin’s here?” She nods off again.

Danny shakes her lightly, as much as to keep her and himself awake.

“Yes, he’s here. But communications are down. Do you have a way to signal him? Them?”

Kono’s eyes flutter. “Wha—?”

“Kono, stay with me.” He shakes her again. “Can you signal them some other way? In your mind? Something?”

Kono closes her eyes, furrowing her brows. Concentrating hard.

Danny is about to ask her what she’s doing, when she gasps, opening her eyes, irises orange with fire.

“They’re close, but they don’t know where we are,” she says, on a flat voice, like in a trance. “Chin, I’ll send you a signal. Be prepared.”

Danny’s head is suddenly filled to the brim with memories that are not his own. Of a boy with wavy thick hair in the beach. Of Kono swimming ashore late in the evening. Of the same boy, all grown up in an old-fashioned motorcycle, Kono riding with him, the joy of feeling the air in their faces. Dinners. School tests. Hugs. Fear. For herself. For her cousin. Love. Friendship. Family.

He gasps back to the present. Making an effort to push those memories back to Kono’s mind and out of his own. As he comes back to himself, he realises Kono has grabbed his hand, and from her other one sparks are shooting from her fingers.

She looks at him inside his mind. They’re face to face in a dark place. The only light source are Kono’s eyes. Ablaze and determined.

Danny nods his permission, interlacing his fingers with her back in the physical world.

A flare of plasma shoots off her free hand, like it had before, back in the Hoku’ae’a, but this time the flare is see-through, and ghost like in density. The flare goes through the hull of the jumper, and Danny turns towards the window to look outside and see what’s happening. The flare intensifies and explodes in thousands of sparks that hurt to look at.

And then she does it again. Her eyes fluttering closed with the effort.

“C’mon Kono, you can do it, woman, you can do it.” Danny cheers her on, feeling his limbs go numb, along with his mind.

The last thing he hears before he falls unconscious again is the open line of the radio: “We’re coming to get you, cuz, hang in there.”

When Danny comes to again, he’s in a cot, lying down next to Steve, who’s turned on his side, looking at him.

“Hey, babe,” he rasps out. Trying to reach to Steve, but too sluggish to accomplish it.

“Hey, stay still for a while, we’re both being re-hydrated.” Steve lifts his arm to show him the fluids being pumped into him. “We are aboard _The Honu_ , a rescue ship…” He trails off, thinking. “Of sorts.”

Danny digests the information and promptly tries to sit up, the opposite of what Steve asked him to do mere seconds ago. Steve reaches out to steady him until he’s upright and leaning back into the wall.

They’re at the ship’s infirmary, Danny spontaneously recognises, having being intimately acquainted with one recently. It gets his heart beating faster. The thought of it.

“Are we,” Danny clears his throat, “going to Oahu now?” Steve nods, and Danny sags further against the wall, relief washing over him at the possibility of seeing his kids again. Steve mirrors Danny’s relief, feeling a weight lift off his own shoulders at seeing him truly relaxed for the first time.

Steve searches his hand and takes it in his own, holding it close to his chest. He gazes into Danny’s eyes and smiles, grateful for both their second chances at reuniting with their families.

The moment is broken when someone knocks on the door, and without waiting for an answer, enters.

Danny recognises him from his mind-meld with Kono in the jumper –for lack of a better word; he’s no other than Chin Ho Kelly, cousin and rescuer extraordinaire.

“Howzit.” Chin greets them. “Good to see you’re both awake.” Though judging by his face, Danny can deduce he means both at the same time. It’s obvious Steve has been awake far longer and has already made introductions with their rescuer.

Danny greets back, lifting a hand and doing an unceremonious wave.

Chin takes a step into the infirmary, followed closely by Kono, who’s wearing better fitting clothes that don’t have burn holes in them. Danny smiles at her.

“So, this your cousin?” Danny asks, tipping his chin at Chin, and losing a word or two between thinking about it and saying it.

Kono nods enthusiastically. She’s positively radiant, nowhere near as battered as Steve and Danny are.

“It’s the genetics,” she answers to Danny’s unspoken questions. “I heal a lot faster than you guys.” She smiles widely, a heavy undercurrent of good natured needling underneath her words.

“I see the mind reading is still in full bloom, though.” Steve interjects, raising his eyebrows at her.

“Yeah,” she sighs out, “I don’t know how long that will be, maybe until my head is healed properly.” She points to the goose egg on her forehead. The one she had acquired back at their desperate exit from 186F.

“Anyway,” she shakes her head slightly, “this is Chin Ho, my cousin.” And turning to him she adds, “I had a feeling that if we got saved by someone it was going to be you.”

Chin’s smile is bright, in a blinding sort of way. Danny wonders if Chin is from the same branch of the family as Kono.

“Yeah, about that, how about we move this conversation to the bridge, once you guys are feeling up to it?” Chin asks, and even though he doesn’t say anything, he hints at everything they’re about to discuss.

About twenty minutes later, Danny shuffles into the bridge of The Honu aided by Steve. They’re wrapped under a blanket each, already hydrated and holding mugs of hot instant chocolate. They’ve been given a generous dose of painkillers as well, so in between the beverages and the opioids, Danny’s feeling very relaxed.

Upon entering the bridge, Danny is made aware of two things. First, there’s more people here than he expected. Other than Chin, there’s two other people sitting at the front, in what he thinks must be the helm. And another guy, with headphones at the left, manning the communications desk. Secondly, unlike the other ships Danny has been in, this one has a huge screen that mimics a windshield on a ground-vessel, showing him the deep vast darkness of the Universe in front of them.

Noting how Danny eyes the enormity of space in front of them, in full HD Technicolour, Steve says, “It’s standard for rescue operations, just in case people’s eyes can catch things and signs of life the machine can’t.”

Danny nods to Steve and takes a deep breath, shuffling to a nearby set of chairs. Needing to sit down again. Steve follows.

Once they are all settled, and the other crew’s chairs are turned to the newcomers. Chin stands next to Kono, putting a hand on her shoulder, and starts, cutting right down to the point.

“Are you guys aware of the date?” He looks down on Kono, a cautious look on his face.

Danny deflates, his mind immediately going to his children. Steve scoots closer to Danny and throws an arm over his shoulders, effectively covering him with his own blanket, like he’s trying to protect Danny from the unkindness of the Universe.

Steve nods for all of them. “We sailed from the Nebulae system in three-thousand twenty-eight point-two, and boarded the jumper in the same year, but at the point-four fraction.”

Chin exudes an aura of zen before he says, “it is already point-five, going into point-six.”

Steve absorbs the information with equanimity, squeezing Danny’s shoulder in support. In front of them Kono wavers, sending a wave of distress that hits Steve near his heart.

Chin continues, “there’s been a revolution in Oahu, that has so far extended to the rest of the Hawaiian System.”

Kono gasps at his side, opening her eyes wide, probably reacting to the parts of the story Chin is not yet telling.

“The population raised in arms,” Chin explains. “It was considered that the death of the Golden Child, and a Special Agent known to have protected many people from the Federation’s bullies, back in New New Jersey, was in fact an attempt at suppressing divergent ideas, of suppressing the people of Hawaii. The fact that the son of a known friend of the communities was also in the list of missing people, didn’t help matters.”

Kono wipes tears from her eyes. Steve blinks and swallows the lump in his throat.

Danny is the one to break the silence. “Do you know anything about my family? What’s the situation like back in Oahu?”

This time, the guy manning the communications desk answers. “Actually, the situation is pretty stable. The resistance has been working on a revolution for years now. It was more like a flash riot. Federation people and key sympathisers have been kicked out, or detained. And about ninety percent of the system’s outposts were manned by resistance workers. Also, your family is fine Special Agent Williams, though I don’t think you have a job with the Federation anymore.” He clicks his mouth shut, squinting his eyes and revising in his head if he let something of importance out.

“Who are you?” Danny asks, eyeing the guy up and down, not ready to trust him or his words.

“Oh, right, sorry.” The stranger apologises, rubbing the palm of his hand on his leg and then offering it to Danny. “Hello, my name is Jerry Ortega.” They shake hands. “I work with the resistance.”

“Okay, Jerry Ortega, one more question. What about the governor? Pat Jameson? What’s the deal with her?”

Jerry widens his eyes, looking at Chin for a cue on what to do.

Chin nods subtly and Jerry explains. “It’s difficult to say. She’s one of the officials that got out of Hawaii before the riots, but she has also worked with the resistance in major cases. At the time, we don’t know who she’s standing with.” Jerry presses his lips into a thin line, giving them time to process the news. It hadn’t escaped the Resistance’s notice that all three of them, Kono, Danny and Steve, were connected not only by land, but by their affiliation to the governor.

Chin clears his throat and points at Steve, getting his attention. “Commander, Jerry also has a message for you, from home.”

Jerry sits up straighter. “Right, true. Like I said before, I work for the resistance, and your dad, sir.” Twisting in his chair, he says to Steve, “He told me to tell you that he’s fine, Commander. He was shocked to see you in the list of missing people aboard the Hoku’ae’a, but he was sure that you were alive.”

Steve’s taken aback by his father’s words. They haven’t talked in years, and yet, somehow, he still puts all his faith in him.

Danny snorts through his nose, halfway between a chuckle and something more bitter.

“There’s a revolution underway,” he summarises, shaking his head in disbelief, “I can’t believe I uprooted my family in search of stability, away from Federation’s central planets, and there’s a revolution underway!”

Danny smiles at Steve and laughs nervously. Steve smiles fondly back at Danny.

“Okay, buddy, deep breaths. Take deep breaths. Relax. We’re alive. Your family is fine. We’ll take it from there once we get to Oahu, okay?”

“How did you even find us, cuz?” It’s Kono’s turn to ask, still digesting the news.

“The Kepler system had an abrupt disruption in the time-continuum about a month ago,” Chin says, turning to look directly at Kono. “When we got the distress call near 186F, I knew it had to be you. I’ve been dreaming about you for months now, ever since the shuttle blinked out of the radar and was declared missing back home. Plus, auntie Nani would have had my head if I didn’t figure out what happened to you.” He smiles at her.

“Who’s that? Auntie Nani?” Steve asks.

Kono smiles luminously at Steve. “That’s my mum.”

Chin introduces them to the rest of the crew. Adam Charles, navigator and resident hacker, though he’s better known as— and basically only responds to— Toast. Malia Waincroft, Chin’s fiancé, medical doctor and in charge of falsifying birth certificates for the non-human new-borns. And finally, their newest recruit, Nahele Huikala, only fourteen years old, recently orphaned and living on the streets until the riots, when he was picked up by a resistance patrol and brought back to HQ, as the kid was trying to boost a car with his special abilities.

“Special abilities, are rare,” Chin explains in a hush, away from the crew’s ears. Not wanting to offend them, but also needing to put Steve and Danny up to date as fast as possible, to avoid the cultural shock once they get home. “Once they realised Nahele had them, we knew we had to protect him at all costs.”

Danny nods, understanding on a deep level the need to protect, not only your own, but especially those who can’t protect themselves. Steve, at his side, look back at the bridge, at the kid in questions, who’s hanging around Jerry’s desk and keeping his hands to himself. Steve can’t help remember himself and Mary, hovering around other people, trying to blend in, to learn everything they could about their surroundings so they wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

After a quick tour of the ship, Danny is getting tired again, or more like overstimulated, so, they are all sent back to their rooms until they reach a sympathising outpost to refuel and embark on their journey back home.

Steve and Danny are set to share a room. Two narrow cots with a narrow space in between them, and a night table at the far wall, opposite to the door. At least they have a private bathroom to the side, one that holds the promise of getting clean and a hot treatment from the few spa options it offers. Danny is incredibly grateful for the spa options; his guess would have been that rescue ships tended to skimp in such mundane pleasures.  

Chin, who also happens to be the acting Captain of this rescue vessel, has his personal room across the hall, and has put Kono in there for the time being. Which is understandable; that he would want to keep her close, after thinking for almost four months that she was dead.

Danny sinks into his cot. It might be narrow and Spartan in appearance, but at least the mattress is firm and it has a plush pillow. Steve seats beside him.

Danny side-eyes him, wanting to point out he as a perfectly good cot, of his own, right there, but lets the rant die before it reaches his tongue instead. 

“I can’t believe we survived,” Steve says, with a tone befitting of a confidential confession. To Danny he suddenly looks about ten years younger, and lost in the world.

“Me neither, babe,” Danny leans on Steve’s chest, chuckling softly, letting the tension of the worst day of his life finally drain off him. Well, worst months, not that he experienced it that way.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Steve asks, for the hundredth time in the hour and a half they’ve been up and around, since waking up in the ship’s infirmary.

Danny looks up and takes in Steve’s dishevelled hair, the tender subtle smile on his face that reaches all the way up to his eyes, and the rumpled borrowed clothes he’s wearing. Danny nods, returning the fondness in earnest. With his eyes, with his arms, with his mind.

Steve’s eyes soften. “Are we having a moment?” He asks, voice lower and moving closer to Danny.

“Why yes, Steven, I think we are,” Danny answers back in a whisper, closing the distance between them, kissing Steve on the lips.

Steve moves closer to Danny, circling one arm over Danny’s shoulder, and sneaking the other around his waist. Danny loops his own around Steve’s waist, and rests his other hand on Steve’s lap, caressing his way softly from Steve’s thigh to his hip.

Their kiss deepens, and Danny uses his hold on Steve to bring him closer, revelling in Steve’s warmth, careful not to hold on to him too tight.

There’s a sudden burst of noise from outside their room, and an angry knock on the door. They jolt apart, looking back at the door in disbelief, knowing full well who is on the other side.

“NO!” Kono yells through the door. “I’m still inside your head and I know what you’re doing! NO!” She taps on the door again, rapidly, to get their attention and hopefully sufficiently ruin the mood.

Danny splutters a laugh into Steve’s neck, and Steve let’s a resounding cackle into the air, surprised.

“This is not funny! I can’t get far away from you two! Wait until we get to Oahu or I swear you’ll regret it!”

“We are not doing anything,” Steve splutters towards the door, eyeing the lock to make sure Kono can’t just come in and harass them up close. 

“Yes, you are, now stop. It’s a day and a half to get home. Keep your hands to yourselves!” Kono shouts one more time, already walking away to the bridge, in search of distraction from having a front row to Steve and Danny’s emerging relationship.

Danny, who senses Kono’s retreating thoughts, eyes Steve back, a satisfied smile on his lips. “Our hands, Steve, we have to keep them to ourselves,” he mocks, waving a hand in front of Steve, and circling it around his neck, pulling him in for another kiss.

“Yes, Danno, whatever you say.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again to my artist [Ivy Cross](http://ivycross.tumblr.com/), for producing art at the speed of light. And [Ilmare Ilse](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilmare_Ilse/), my beta and friend, for her unwavering support. Finally, a shout out to [Only Him](http://archiveofourown.org/users/OnlyHim/pseuds/OnlyHim), for being an intrepid first reader and giving me some pointers on writing less confusing POVs. 
> 
> I'm amazed at having finished this Big Bang, there were almost a dozen times where I thought about stepping down and forgetting about it. At some point I said --jokingly-- I would be writing to the last minute and turns out self-fulfilled prophecies are not as fun as they sound.
> 
> Really hope you guys enjoyed it and if you did, feel free to drop me a line, or a keyboard smash, I would really appreciate it <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art Master Post for Hoku'ae'a - Rising Star](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14343852) by [ivycross](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivycross/pseuds/ivycross)




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